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THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 


“ INDIAN ” STORIES 
WITH HISTORICAL BASES 
By D. LANGE 
12mo Cloth Illustrated 

ON THE TRAIL OF THE SIOUX 

THE SILVER ISLAND OF THE 
CHIPPEWA 

LOST IN THE FUR COUNTRY 
IN THE GREAT WILD NORTH 
THE LURE OF THE BLACK HILLS 
THE LURE OF THE MISSISSIPPI 
THE SILVER CACHE OF THE PAWNEE 
THE SHAWNEE’S WARNING 
THE THREAT OF SITTING BULL 
THE RAID OF THE OTTAWA 
THE MOHAWK RANGER 
THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO., BOSTON 









But now one of the young Indians raised his hatchet and 

came at Jonas.— Page 204 . 







THE 

IROQUOIS SCOUT 


yBy 

D. LANGE 

i* 


ILLUSTRATED BY 

HAROLD JAMES CUE 

) 

i 3 



BOSTON 

LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO. 











Copyright, 1923, 
By D. Lange 

The Iroquois Scout 




Printed in U. S. A. 

Iftorwoofc prcsa 
BERWICK & SMITH CO. 
Norwood, Mass. 

© Cl A7 6 0 80 6 

NOV '9 1923 






23 . 


CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 

I. 

Ganadoga 

mm 

_ 

page 

9 

II. 

Friends of Ganadoga 

- 

- 

18 

III. 

The Big Chain 

- 

- 

26 

IV. 

A Long Pull - 

- 

- 

36 

V. 

A Quick Decision - 

- 

- 

44 

VI. 

A Dreaded Enemy - 

- 

- 

52 

VII. 

Ganadoga Is Puzzled 

- 

- 

64 

VIII. 

Scouting for News 

4m 

- 

73 

IX. 

The First Trail 

- 

- 

82 

X. 

A Hard Pace - 

- 

v» 

93 

XI. 

Real Danger - 

- 

- 

101 

XII. 

The Mohawks 

- 

- 

114 

XIII. 

Ganadoga Has Hews 

- 

- 

126 

XIV. 

The Mysterious Gobbler 

- 

136 

XV. 

A Bad Hight - 

- 

- 

145 

XVI. 

Unexpected Danger 

- 

- 

153 

XVII. 

More Bad Hews 

- 

- 

162 

XVIII. 

Jim Goes Hunting - 

- 

- 

170 

XIX. 

Bad Medicine Camp 

- 

- 

177 

XX. 

A Fateful Day 

- 

- 

189 

XXI. 

With the Mohawks 

5 

- 

- 

199 


6 


CONTENTS 


XXII. 

Jonas Before the Council 

206 

XXIII. 

The Indian Cornfield 

213 

XXIV. 

Jonas Meets His Enemy 

222 

XXV. 

The Fight - 

233 

XXVI. 

More Anxieties - 

242 

XXVII. 

Jim’s Worry - 

250 

XXVIII. 

The White Lads Mystified - 

257 

XXIX. 

On Lake Skanodario - 

264 

XXX. 

Big News - 

275 

XXXI. 

Into the New Unknown 

285 

XXXII. 

The Last Order - 

299 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


But now one of the young Indians 
raised his hatchet and came at 
Jonas (Page 204) . . Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

“ He tried to point his gun at me, but I struck 

it out of his hand ” .... 62 

Jim tried fishing in the creek . 108 

But the face of Jonas they painted black . 192 

There came Jim racing down the field as if 

a whole tribe of Iroquois were after him 222 

“ Are you Nathan Stillwell ? ” . .298 


7 


The Iroquois Scout 


CHAPTER I 

GANADOGA 

Ganadoga, the young Iroquois scout, had 
made a fast trip from Fort Stanwix in the 
Iroquois country in western New York. 
Down the Mohawk River he had travelled in 
a canoe with several of his friends; but when 
the party reached the junction of the Mo¬ 
hawk with the Hudson, he had bid his friends 
farewell and taken the forest trail that led 
south on the west side of the Hudson. 

Ganadoga had served as a scout for the 
Americans since the army of the British 
under St. Leger had appeared in the Mo¬ 
hawk Valley in 1777. 

In the long struggle of the Americans for 
independence, Ganadoga’s people, the Onei- 
das, and the Tuscaroras were the only tribes 
of the Iroquois Confederacy, or Six Nations, 
that remained friendly to the Americans. 

The other four tribes, after a feeble at- 

9 


10 THE IKOQUOIS SCOUT 

tempt at neutrality, openly joined the British 
under the leadership of Joseph Brant, the 
famous war chief of the Mohawks. 

Ganadoga was now a youth of twenty, tall 
and lithe, active and quick as a panther, and 
a runner of great endurance. He could have 
travelled in ease on a sailing vessel from 
Albany down the Hudson to West Point. 
But he was carrying some important papers, 
and he was afraid, if he took passage on a 
river sloop, that he might fall in with British 
spies; so he decided upon the more difficult 
journey by Indian trails and country roads. 

It was the spring of 1781. Ganadoga 
had safely reached a spot in the woods well 
known to him, just back of the town of New¬ 
burgh on the Hudson River, about twelve 
miles above West Point. 

Ganadoga, just before the outbreak of the 
war, had spent two years in the school of 
Dr. Eleazar Wheelock at Hanover, N. H. 
He had been sent there by the Reverend 
Samuel Kirkland, the devoted missionary of 
the Oneidas, whose influence had kept the 
Oneidas friendly to the Americans. 

In this school, Ganadoga had learned to 


GANADOGA 


11 


speak and read English fluently, but he had 
not learned to like sleeping in a white man’s 
house. 

“ The white man’s houses are too hot and 
stuffy,” he used to say to his white boyhood 
friend, Jonas Stillwell, who was also a pupil 
at Dr. Wheelock’s school. “ They are only 
good places to sleep in, when the big winter 
storms blow from the north.” 

Ganadoga could have stopped overnight 
in a tavern at Newburgh, in fact, he could 
easily have gone to the house of his friend, 
Jonas Stillwell, who lived with his parents on 
a farm only a mile northwest of the town. 

But Ganadoga would not visit with 
friends before he had delivered his papers 
and oral messages to the commanding officer 
at West Point. It was for that reason that 
he was camping alone at a place to which 
the early Dutch settlers had given the name: 
“ Duyvel’s Dans Kammer,” the Devil’s 
Dance Chamber. 

He knew every foot of ground near the 
Dans Kammer, because he and his school 
friend, Jonas Stillwell, had often roamed 
and hunted all through the woods near New- 


12 THE IKOQUOIS SCOUT 

burgh during vacations of Dr. Wheelock’s 
school. 

Now Ganadoga built a small fire in a 
secluded spot between two big rocks. 
Within a few minutes he had made for him¬ 
self a refreshing drink of sassafras tea, 
which he sweetened with maple sugar made 
in the woods on Oneida Lake. At school 
Ganadoga had grown very fond of the white 
man’s tea, which English ships brought to 
Boston and New York. But white man’s 
tea was now far too expensive for an Indian 
scout. For some reason, which Ganadoga 
never could quite understand, the white 
people in Boston had thrown much good tea 
into the sea. 

When the sassafras tea was done, he 
broiled a grouse, which he had killed in the 
afternoon with his short hunting bow; for 
on his quick and long scouting trips, the 
young Oneida did not generally encumber 
himself with a heavy gun. 

The meal was as quickly eaten as it was 
cooked; in fact, Ganadoga was so hungry 
that he ate one half of the bird, while the 
other half was still broiling over the fire. 


GANADOGA 


13 


When he had finished his meal, he raked 
dirt on the coals, and made himself a bed 
of dry leaves at some distance away from 
the place where he had built the fire. This 
precaution of not sleeping near their camp¬ 
fires was observed by all American Indians, 
when they were travelling in the country 
of a hostile tribe. Ganadoga knew that he 
was over a hundred miles from any hostile 
Indians, and he felt sure that no British 
spies had recognized and followed him, but 
he obeyed this important rule of safety with¬ 
out giving a thought to it. When the com¬ 
mander of Fort Stanwix had impressed it 
upon him, Ganadoga had protested with a 
smile, saying, “ General, I am not a white 
man. An Iroquois scout does not forget the 
war rules of the Six Nations.” 

Usually, when Ganadoga felt himself safe, 
he fell asleep as soon as he had pulled his 
gray blanket or deerskin robe over his head; 
but to-night he could not sleep. 

This was his first scouting service down 
the Hudson to West Point, since the out¬ 
break of the war. He had served through 
Burgoyne’s campaign in 1777, and had fol- 


14 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

lowed St. Leger and his fleeing Britishers 
and Indians to Oswego. 

Two years ago, in 1779, in the expedition 
of General Sullivan, when the American 
Long Knives destroyed all the villages and 
orchards and cornfields of the Mohawks and 
other Iroquois tribes, except those of the 
Oneidas, he had refused to serve. 

But the Oneidas were not much better off 
than the other tribes. Indeed, the Mohawks 
had burnt a village and destroyed some fields 
of the Oneidas, and they had even killed 
some Oneida warriors, although Oneidas and 
Mohawks both belonged to the Six Nations 
of the Iroquois, whose people were all bound 
together by sacred ties of friendship, and had 
not waged war against one another within 
the memory of their oldest men. 

But now the whole earth, so far as Gana- 
doga knew it, was at war; Englishmen were 
fighting Englishmen, and even the great 
peace league of the Iroquois had gone to 
ruin. 

Joseph Brant, Tayendanaga, the great 
war chief of the Mohawks, and his warriors 
had openly joined the British. Joseph 


GANADOGA 


15 


Brant said he and his people were simply 
keeping the covenant which they had made 
with the king of the English, who lived on 
the other side of the Great Lake. 

Some of Ganadoga’s own people, the 
Oneidas, had often said they also ought to 
join the English, but their beloved mission¬ 
ary had persuaded them to remain neutral. 
The Americans would surely win, in the end, 
he had assured them. The redcoat soldiers 
of the king, he had explained, were afraid 
to march away from the sea and fight the 
Americans. If they ever did so, they would 
be defeated. Did not all the Oneidas know 
what had happened to St. Leger and to 
Burgoyne? Since that time the king’s sol¬ 
diers had been afraid to come out of the big 
towns, New York and Philadelphia. The 
more soldiers the king sent over, the more 
food he had to send. Some day the king 
would get tired of sending food and clothing 
to his soldiers. He would call them all home 
and then the war would be over. 

If the king’s soldiers ever left the towns 
on the coast, they would soon starve and tire 
themselves out by marching about in the 


16 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

woods, and then the Americans would take 
them all prisoners, as they had done with 
Burgoyne and his men. 

Ganadoga wanted to believe what the 
good Father Kirkland told his people, but 
he could not understand why George Wash¬ 
ington did not march into New York. 
Why did he just camp and camp and wait 
for the redcoat soldiers to come out? Per¬ 
haps they never would come out, because the 
big ships brought them plenty to eat and 
they could sleep in warm houses. Why 
should they want to come out and fight and 
march here and there through the forest? 

Ganadoga had been told that, when he was 
a very small boy, there had been a great war 
between the French and the English and he 
had a vague recollection of seeing some 
French rangers coming to the Oneida village 
on snowshoes. That war he could under¬ 
stand. It was a war between two tribes of 
the white men. His own people, the Iro¬ 
quois, often waged war against tribes that 
did not belong to the Six Nations. 

But this war between the English them¬ 
selves was a puzzle to Ganadoga, as it was to 


GANADOGA 


17 


all the warriors of the Iroquois. The king 
and his officers and soldiers did not want the 
land of the Americans, nor did they want to 
hunt and trap in the forest. Then why did 
the Americans fight them? Neither side 
made scalps nor tortured prisoners; on the 
contrary they fed their prisoners or sent 
them home. 

As far as Ganadoga had ever been able 
to make out, the Americans had thrown the 
English tea in the water, because there was 
something in it, which they called taxation. 
This taxation, Ganadoga concluded, must be 
some kind of bad medicine, which made 
people sick if they drank the tea. The king 
must have great quantities of taxation or he 
could not have put it in a whole shipful of 
tea. 

That was the most reasonable cause Gana¬ 
doga could find for this great war, which 
had now been going on for six years. 

And then the tired young scout fell 
asleep. 


CHAPTER II 


FRIENDS OF GANADOGA 

When Ganadoga awoke, the wood- 
thrushes and robins were singing to their 
mates with the joy of spring that had come 
anew to the beautiful Highlands, irrespec¬ 
tive of human war and suffering. 

Ganadoga had nothing to eat for break¬ 
fast, and he had planned to make a quick 
trip of the twelve miles still between him and 
West Point. 

But as he bent down to drink from the 
spring, which he and Jonas had many times 
visited on their rambles through the woods, a 
great longing to see Jonas came over him, 
and he decided to go by way of the Stillwell 
farm to see his friend of many happy days, 
or learn what had become of him. 

Perhaps he would not find Jonas at home. 

He might be with the American troops in 

Virginia, or he might even be with those at 

West Point, where the Americans were 

18 


FRIENDS OF GANADOGA 


19 


eagerly watching and guarding the broad 
Hudson River, which twice the British had 
almost wrested from the control of the 
Americans; the last time only about a year 
ago, when Benedict Arnold had sacrificed 
his fair name and brave soldier’s reputation 
by turning traitor to the cause of his country. 
The strange story of Benedict Arnold had 
added another puzzle for Ganadoga to the 
many puzzles of this war. 

But perhaps his friend Jonas Stillwell 
could explain some of these puzzles to him. 
Jonas never laughed at the questions of his 
Indian friend, and Ganadoga would not be 
afraid to ask him. 

The young scout was now rapidly 
approaching the log house of John Stillwell. 
He could see the blue smoke curling from the 
chimney. In contrast to the Mohawk 
Valley, where most of the houses had been 
burnt, the fields destroyed, and the cattle 
either killed or driven off, the Hudson 
Valley looked much as it did when Jonas 
and Ganadoga fished and swam in the river, 
and hunted rabbits and woodchucks in the 
forest. 


20 


THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 


Toward the east, behind Beacon Hill, as 
Ganadoga looked back for a minute, he saw 
the sun coming up in a great blaze of red; 
and as he walked rapidly on again, he heard 
the crowing of cocks and the lowing of cattle. 

With a loud-beating heart, the young 
Indian entered the clearing of the Stillwell 
farm. His friend might not be alive any 
more. So many Americans had been killed 
in the desperate battle with the Indians at 
Oriskany and in the many fights which had 
finally compelled Burgoyne to surrender 
four years ago, in 1777. 

But now the Indian saw a tall young man 
opening the bars and turning the cattle out 
to pasture. That must be Jonas’s big 
brother Nathan. No, it was not Nathan. 
Ganadoga had forgotten for a moment that 
Jonas was no longer a boy, but a young man. 
It was Jonas himself. 

“ Jonas! ” cried the young scout, throwing 
off his Indian reticence. “ Don’t you know 
me? It is Ganadoga of the Oneidas!” 

“Bless my soul!” exclaimed Jonas. 
“ Where do you come from, Doga? I heard 
that the warriors of Brant had killed vou.” 


FRIENDS OF GANADOGA 


21 


The boys at school had found the name of 
the Oneida lad too long and had shortened 
it to Doga. 

“ They will never kill me,” the scout re¬ 
plied with a smile. “ The Oneidas know 
the trails of the Iroquois country as well as 
the warriors of Brant know them. The 
Mohawks are fighting for the English, but 
the Oneidas will remain the friends of the 
Americans.” 

“ You must come in and eat with us,” 
urged Jonas. “ Mother has the breakfast 
on the table, and I know that a scout is 
always hungry.” 

“ I am hungry,” Ganadoga admitted to 
his boyhood friend, “for I carried no food 
with me but maple sugar, and the hunting 
was poor along the trail.” 

The breakfast on Mrs. Stillwell’s table 
was of the kind both to tempt and satisfy a 
hungiy man. Ham and eggs, with plenty of 
butter and hot biscuits, and real tea for 
beverage. 

“ Our soldiers captured a wagon-load of 
it from the British near New York,” 
John Stillwell related, “ and one of our men 


22 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

was lucky in bringing a bale of it to New¬ 
burgh.” 

Ganadoga wondered if there was any tax¬ 
ation in this tea. Apparently it was free 
from this bad medicine, and the young scout 
had his cup filled several times. 

After breakfast, Father and Mother Still¬ 
well urged the Oneida to stay a while and 
rest, but the scout declared that he was not 
tired and that he must hurry on to West 
Point. 

One thing had puzzled Ganadoga, while 
he sat at table with his friends. Nathan, 
the older brother of Jonas, was not there, and 
none of the family told where he was or even 
mentioned him. But it seemed to Ganadoga 
that Father and Mother Stillwell had aged 
very much since he had last seen them, only 
six or seven years ago. He had expected to 
see Jonas grown up and was not surprised to 
find that Sam, the youngest of the family, 
had grown to be a strong red-cheeked boy of 
about twelve, but he had not expected to find 
so marked a change in his hosts. 

“ Jonas, you may go with your friend to 
West Point,” said Stillwell, when Ganadoga 


FRIENDS OF GANADOGA 


23 


prepared to leave. “ You have not seen 
each other for a long time. We finished 
planting corn yesterday, and there is no very 
pressing work. 

“ I think, boys,” Stillwell continued as 
Jonas was getting ready, “ you had better 
take our boat. The tide will be running 
down river about seven o’clock and the wind 
is fair from the north. So you can hoist the 
sail and make much better time than you 
could do on foot.” 

“ Yes, do that, Jonas,” Mother Stillwell 
agreed. “ You have worked hard all spring. 
People say that everything is quiet on the 
river now, while much fighting is going on in 
Virginia and the Carolinas. Some folks 
think the war will soon be over, but I have 
almost given up hope. I fear the British will 
come back and George Washington and all 
our leaders will be hanged, unless they flee 
to the Indian country, hut Father and Jonas 
always laugh at me when I talk like that.” 

“ No, Mother, the king’s soldiers will not 
come back,” replied John Stillwell. “ Most 
of the Tories have already left for Canada or 
New York, and I think the British are as 


24 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

tired of the war as we are. They have tried 
for five years to get control of the Hudson, 
but Washington is just a little too much for 
them. West Point is now strongly forti¬ 
fied, there are plenty of big guns on the high 
hill in Fort Putnam, and our men have 
stretched a big chain across the river at West 
Point, so that no British vessels can sail into 
Newburgh Bay. The French have sent 8,000 
men to help us, and last night at the meeting 
of our committee, it was reported that a large 
French fleet was coming to help us. 

“ So you need not fear, Mother; there will 
be no hanging of patriots. Of course, our 
weakness is that we have no fleet. If we had 
a fleet, we should have driven the British out 
of New York long ago, but as it is we must 
leave them in possession of that port till the 
war is over. 

“ However, if the French can send enough 
ships to keep the British fleet out of 
Chesapeake Bay, Washington and Lafay¬ 
ette will soon make short work of Cornwallis 
in Virginia, and then we shall have the peace 
we all long for. 

“ But now you must go, boys. The wind 


FRIENDS OF GANADOGA 25 

has been north several claj^s, and if it should 
turn south you could not use the sails. 

“ Ganadoga, you must stay with us a few 
days, when you come back from West Point. 
Then you can tell us the news of the Mohawk 
Valley. I understand that whole beautiful 
country is ruined. But now, boys, you must 

-_5 J 

go. 


CHAPTER III 


THE BIG CHAIN 

Jonas and Ganadoga almost forgot that 
they were sailing down the Hudson on seri¬ 
ous business. 

A swift tide was running and a fresh 
breeze swelled the sail. White-capped waves 
toppled over and over, as if they were chas¬ 
ing one another down Newburgh Bay, but 
the little keel boat cut through them as if 
she were racing in a modern regatta; and be¬ 
lated flocks of northern ducks had to take 
wing to get out of her course. 

It was still earlv in the forenoon when the 
young scout delivered his letters to the 
adjutant of the commander and received 
orders to report for return letters at four in 
the afternoon. 

During the interval the two friends had 
time to take a look at Fort Putnam on one 
of the high hills behind West Point. 

“ If any British ships try to run up the 

26 


THE BIG CHAIN 


27 


Hudson,” Jonas remarked to his friend, 
“ the guns here will send them so many bad- 
medicine pills that they will be glad to re¬ 
turn to New York.” 

But Ganadoga was most interested in the 
big chain that was stretched across the river. 
He had seen big chains which the white 
teamsters used to haul the heavy baggage- 
wagons over muddy roads and across the 
fords of streams, and he had often wondered 
how the white men made these chains that 
were so strong that a dozen yoke of oxen 
could not break them. But he would not 
have dreamed that even white men could 
make a chain with links like those that Jonas 
described to him. 

“ The links are that long,” Jonas asserted, 
holding up his hands about eighteen inches 
apart, “ and they are as thick as my wrist. I 
saw them last year, when I was called out 
with the militia, and the chain is over half a 
mile long.” 

Ganadoga looked questioningly at his 
friend. Jonas had never fooled him or told 
him a lie, but the other white boys at Dr. 
Wheelock’s school had played many mean 


28 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

tricks on him. Once they had let him sit on 
a rainy night holding a sack between two 
willow bushes in a swamp on the old fake 
game of catching snipe. When Ganadoga, 
at last, returned home wet and cold, pitying 
his two white friends who he thought had 
lost their way while beating up the snipe for 
him over that wild wet marsh, he found the 
scamps soundly asleep in their warm beds! 

From that day on Ganadoga had a bad 
time of it at school, till he induced the snipe- 
hunters to swallow a bite of young skunk 
cabbage seeds on the representation that 
these seeds were a powerful Indian medicine, 
by the use of which their scouts could keep 
awake all night, and that a boy who ate some 
of this medicine would not feel sleepy till he 
had finished all his lessons. 

It turned out to be quite true that the 
medicine would keep boys awake. One of 
the lads who had taken an extra large bite 
became so scared by the burning sensation 
in his throat that he ran about yelling, “ The 
Indian boy has poisoned me! I’m going to 
die. I’m going to die! ” 

The whole school was alarmed, and when 


THE BIG CHAIN 


29 


Dr. Wheelock learned what the trouble was, 
he made the two medicine-eaters swallow a 
large dose of castor oil, the favorite remedy 
of those days for all the ills of boyhood. 
But when he approached Ganadoga with a 
big spoonful of the hated oil, the Indian boy 
declared, “ I am not sick, Doctor. I boiled 
my seeds first. Those fellows made me hold 
a sack to catch snipe.” 

That was too much even for dignified Dr. 
Wheelock. He turned away laughing, but 
threatened that any boy who hereafter 
caused a disturbance in school would be put 
on a diet of bread and water for a week. 

That night Ganadoga enjoyed a more un¬ 
broken sleep than his two fellow snipe- 
hunters. His schoolmates, after this event, 
seemed to have forgotten his snipe-hunting 
adventure, but his reputation as a great 
medicine man was firmly established. The 
two white boys, however, led an uncomfort¬ 
able existence for the remainder of the school 
year. Every boy who was not too small 
taunted them with “ skunk cabbage and 
castor oil,” until in the following school year, 
two new boys had been initiated to the virtues 


30 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

of Ganadoga’s medicine and its famous anti¬ 
dote which this time the promoters of the 
affair did not wait for Dr. Wheelock to ad¬ 
minister. 

Dr. Wheelock’s school was a famous in¬ 
stitution in those days. It was attended by 
both white boys and Indians. The famous 
Mohawk chief, Joseph Brant, attended the 
school for some time and made such good 
progress that he wrote and spoke better 
English and was generally better educated 
than many of the white generals of the 
Revolutionary War. 

At the time of Ganadoga and Jonas, the 
school had already been moved from 
Lebanon, Connecticut, to Hanover, New 
Hampshire. This was done in 1770, and 
the school had actually received its charter 
as Dartmouth College the year before. 

Talking over their school days, Jonas and 
Ganadoga arrived at the west end of the big 
chain, and after they had shown their passes, 
the soldiers on guard duty were quite willing 
to talk. 

“ You lads should have come a few days 
earlier,” said the sergeant. “ We stretched 


THE BIG CHAIN 


31 


that big chain across the river only a few 
days ago, on the tenth and eleventh of April. 
It was a big job. We had two hundred and 
fifty men working at it. Here, lads, is a 
defective link, which you may have for a 
keepsake.” 

“ Lift it, Doga,” said Jonas. “ I noticed 
you thought I was fooling you, when I told 
you about the links.” 

“ It must weigh a hundred pounds,” 
Ganadoga admitted, raising one end off the 
ground. “ It is as heavy as a deer.” 

“ I thought, Sergeant, the chain was 
stretched across the river last year,” Jonas 
asked. 

“ Yes, it was,” the sergeant informed 
them. “ But you see, we have to pull it up 
on shore at the beginning of winter, or the 
ice would take it out. Even a chain like 

t 

this could not resist the ice going down¬ 
stream with the wind and the tides.” 

“ I see, brother,” Ganadoga spoke, “ that 
you told me the truth about the chain and the 
big links. I knew white men could make 
such a chain, but I could not see how they 
could keep it from sinking to the bottom. 


32 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

Now I see they have the chain fastened to 
big floating logs every few rods.” 

“ That’s the only way to float it,” the 
sergeant explained. “ The logs are anchored 
to the bottom and we put enough swivels in 
the chain, so the big thing can’t get kinked 
and twisted. I tell you, lads, our engineers 
can do anything. I believe they could build 
a bridge or a dam across the Hudson, if 
Congress and Washington wanted it done.” 

At the appointed time the lads called for 
the letters Ganadoga was to carry back to 
Fort Stanwix, and after they had been 
furnished a substantial supper, they went 
down to the boat landing. 

The wind was still from the north and 
they sat down on shore to wait for the tide 
to turn up-stream. 

“ My friend,” said Ganadoga, “ I thought 
much of one thing of which you have not told 
me. Where is your brother, Nathan? Is 
he with Washington or Lafayette, or where 
is he? ” 

A shadow passed over the white lad’s face, 
as he began to tell what the Stillwell family 
knew of their oldest son. 


THE BIG CHAIN 


33 


“Nathan,” he began, “went with two 
surveyors to the Mohawk Valley just before 
the outbreak of the war, about six years ago, 
to survey a large land grant on the Mohawk 
River. 

“ Soon after the war began, he enlisted as 
a scout, and he was wounded in the battle of 
Oriskany. Later he sent us greetings from 
German Flats, telling us that he had re¬ 
covered from his wound, and was in good 
health. Once he came as far east as Schenec¬ 
tady, but he never came down to Newburgh 
or West Point. 

“ Two j^ears ago we learned that he had 
gone on scout duty to Oswego and Fort 
Niagara, and he sent word that he might 
have to go to the country of the Shawnees 
and other Western Indians. Father and 
Mother should not worry, he was in fine 
health and would take good care of himself. 
And that is the last we have heard of him.” 

“ It is all good news,” replied Ganadoga, 
“ except that he has sent no word for two 
years. The Western Indians are all on the 
side of the English, who supply them with 
guns and ammunition and give them valuable 


34 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

presents. It is told among the Oneidas 
that the English pay the Shawnees and other 
tribes for American scalps. That may be a 
lie, but they call the English commander at 
Detroit the Hair-Buyer. Many lies are 
flying through the air like birds. The sol¬ 
diers on both sides often do cruel things that 
are not good fighting. Brant does not want 
his warriors to harm women and children and 
old men, but they do not always obey his 
orders when he is not present. 

“ Who was the young boy in your father’s 
home, whom you called Jim? He is not 
your brother? ” 

“ No, I fear Jim is an orphan now. His 
mother died a long time ago. His father, 
James Abbot, went down to New York a 
year ago and has never come back. There 
was a story that he was drowned in Hell 
Gate of the East River. Some say the 
British put him in prison as a spy, and 
others say that a British press-gang put him 
on board a man-of-war. Father says Jim 
is my shadow, because he is always with me. 
He sleeps with me, and sits next to me at 
meals. When he is with me he is happy. 


THE BIG CHAIN 35 

He does not remember his mother and 
seldom speaks of his father. We had a hard 
time to make him stay at home last year, 
when I was called out with the militia. He 
insisted that he was big enough to live in 
camp with the soldiers.” 

“ Did Nathan never write a letter home? ” 
Ganadoga asked. 

“ No, he never learned to write very well,” 
replied Jonas. “ Mother and Father are 
both worrying night and day. You must 
have noticed that they look sad and weary. 
They say Nathan was always a dare-devil, 
and they fear that the Western Indians have 
killed him or taken him prisoner.” 


CHAPTER IV 


A LONG PULL 

The Highlands behind West Point lay 
already in the deep shadows of evening, when 
the two friends started up the river for New¬ 
burgh; hut Eeacon Hill and the wooded 
slopes on the east side of the Hudson stood 
out like a well-lighted picture in all the glory 
of spring. 

The lads were glad that the wind had died 
down. They bent themselves vigorously to 
the oars, and going with the tide they made 
good progress. There was little talk at the 
start, for each man was busy with his own 
thoughts. 

Ganadoga was old enough and had seen 
enough of the world and the war to realize 
that his own people, the Iroquois, had come 
to the parting of the ways. For the first 
time in their history, the League of the Six 
Nations was hopelessly divided. 

Sullivan’s expedition into the Iroquois 

36 


A LONG PULL 


37 


country, and the destruction of the villages 
and cornfields of the Indians, had made all 
of the Six Nations, except the Oneidas and 
Tuscaroras, bitter and resentful enemies of 
the Americans, but it had by no means 
stopped the hostile tribes from waging war 
and making raids against the white settle¬ 
ments. Brant and his warriors were apt to 
appear anywhere and at any time. 

The white settlers, who had not fled nor 
been killed in battle were herded together in 
some two dozen stockades scattered from 
Schenectady to Fort Stanwix, at the site of 
the present city of Rome, N. Y. 

This fort controlled the ancient portage 
between the Mohawk River and Wood Creek 
which flows into Lake Oneida, from which a 
water route, down the Oneida and Oswego 
Rivers connected the Mohawk with Lake 
Ontario. 

For the first time in their history, the 
Iroquois had lost control of this great route 
between the Hudson and the Great Lakes, 
but Brant and his warriors now made use of 
another route, which extended from Fort 
Niagara to the Susquehanna. 


38 THE IEOQUOIS SCOUT 

Ganadoga wondered what would happen 
to the Iroquois if the Americans won the 
war. 

Jonas also was preoccupied with his own 
thoughts. Until recently he had been able 
to cheer up his parents, by telling them that 
Nathan was well versed in woodcraft and all 
the ways of the Indians, and that he was as 
cautious as he was fearless, and that they 
would surely soon hear of him or he would 
come home almost any day. But when the 
months dragged out into years and no word 
came, Jonas himself began to fear that there 
would never be any such thing as good news 
from Nathan. 

Jonas, himself, had wished very much to 
enlist, but his father had been badly in need 
of him on the farm, and the Newburgh Com¬ 
mittee had also opposed the plan. 

“ We need some young men,” they said, 
“ to serve in our militia, and we need a few 
young men to help us raise corn and beef 
for the army.” 

Unfortunately both of these arguments 
had much weight. Nobody could tell when 
the British would again try to pass the 


A LONG PULL 


39 


obstructions at West Point and to gain con¬ 
trol of the Hudson. If they ever succeeded 
in this attempt, they would cut New Eng¬ 
land off from New York and the Southern 
Colonies. Twice they had come dangerously 
close to it. There was no telling when there 
would be a sudden call for more men at West 
Point. A fire on Beacon Hill and on other 
high points at night and cannon shots heard 
in daytime were the signals for the immediate 
assembling of the militia. 

The argument for young men needed to 
raise grain and corn may sound somewhat 
specious to a present-day reader, but it must 
not be forgotten that farm machinery was 
unknown in 1781, and that cutting grass and 
grain with a scythe is work of the most 
fatiguing kind, at which only a strong man 
can work all day. 

“ Doga, I have often wished that I could 
go and enlist,” Jonas broke the silence. “ I 
often feel that I am not doing enough for 
our cause. You see I would work just as 
hard if the country were at peace, and I can 
never learn anything about Nathan while I 
stay at home and work on the farm. 


40 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

“ But if I enlist now, I’ll be sent south, 
and I am sure Nathan is not in Virginia or 
the Carolinas. If he is still alive, he is some¬ 
where out West. He may be a prisoner at 
Fort Niagara, or he may be in the Ohio 
country or in Kentucky. He often told me 
that he wanted to see those regions, and if 
he could do so, he would go as far west as 
the Mississippi and hunt buffalo with the 
Indians. 

“ Of course we talked that way before the 
war. A trader who had been in Ohio and 
the Illinois country told us that the land is 
very good there. He said there were no 
stones and rocks as here in New York and 
New England, and much of the rich land, he 
said, did not even have any trees on it. All 
you would have to do is to plow it and plant 
com.” 

“ But all that land belongs to the In¬ 
dians,” Ganadoga objected. “ They wel¬ 
come white traders, but they make war 
against all settlers.” 

“ That is true,” admitted Jonas, “ but I 
would not be surprised if Nathan had bought 
goods of the British at Niagara or Detroit 


A LONG PULL 


41 


and was trading with the Indians now. But 
it is more likely that he is taking part in the 
expeditions against the Western Indians. 
He never was afraid of any danger, and I 
never saw him lose his head. 

“ I shall never forget the fight Nathan had 
with our big red bull, Billy. Nathan had 
raised him and made a pet of him from the 
time he was a funny little calf. But funny 
little Billy grew to be the biggest bull in the 
whole neighborhood, and when he was about 
five years old, he became ugly and acted as 
if he owned the farm. It started in spring, 
after the cattle were turned out to pasture, 
and at harvest time he had grown so ugly 
that he wouldn’t budge for anybody but 
Nathan, and one day he made a stand 
against Nathan. I can still see the dirt 
flying over his back as he pawed the ground, 
and his roaring and bellowing had me scared 
out my wits, and I always thought Father, 
too, was scared by the mad beast. 

“ Nathan, after trying in vain to make 
him move, went to the barn after the black- 
snake whip. 

“ 4 Don’t you go near him, Nathan!’ 


42 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

Mother begged. ‘ Please don’t go near 
him.’ 

“ But Nathan’s anger was up. 

“ ‘ I’ll show him who is boss on this place,’ 
he said, and went straight for Billy, calling 
him to move on. But Billy’s fighting blood 
was up and he wouldn’t move. Pie only 
pawed harder and bellowed louder; and 
pretty soon he started to charge at Nathan. 

“ Mother screamed, Father ran into the 
house after the gun, and I ran to the barn 
for a pitchfork. 

“ Well, when Father and I came out, Billy 
and Nathan were at the farther end of the 
pasture. Nathan had hold of Billy’s tail 
with his left hand and with his right he swung 
the blacksnake on Billyh’s ribs. Billy turned 
his big bulk round and round as fast as he 
could, like a dog trying to catch his own 
tail. It was a very hot day, and Billy soon 
got tired dancing around. Then he tried to 
break awav, but he couldn’t loosen Nathan’s 
grip. ITe started to jump the bars, but he 
couldn’t make it, and all the time Nathan 
swung the blacksnake on his ribs and back. 
Before long Nathan had him so exhausted 


A LONG PULL 


43 


that he rolled over in his tracks completely 
tired out, and Nathan sat on his neck, till 
Father came and put a ring in his nose. 

“After that Billy was as gentle as a lamb, 
whenever he saw anybody coming at him 
with a blacksnake.” 

It was midnight when the lads reached the 
Stillwell farm. 

“ Let’s get some blankets and sleep in the 
hayloft,” suggested Jonas. “ If you don’t 
mind, Doga.” 

Ganadoga said he would much rather sleep 
in the hayloft than in the house; and in a 
very short time the two lads, after their long 
pull up the Hudson, lay sound asleep on the 
fragrant hay. 


CHAPTER V 


A QUICK DECISION 

It was long past sunrise when Jonas and 
Ganadoga came down from the hayloft. 
Jim had helped with the milking and had 
turned the cattle out to pasture. John Still¬ 
well had gone out to repair some fences, not 
wire fences, but the old-time worm fences 
made of split rails of oak, walnut, ash, and 
other trees, which had to be cut down in 
clearing the land. 

Mother Stillwell was getting ready a large 
quantity of rich sour cream for the churn. 
She had tied up the big old dog, Roger, in the 
woodshed, for it was Roger’s job to work 
the churn; but it was a job which he disliked 
very much. When he saw Mrs. Stillwell 
bring up the cream pans from the cellar and 
rinse the churn, he would steal away to the 
woods, as if he suddenly remembered a wood¬ 
chuck that needed his attention or a bone that 

should be dug up. If he had once left, it 

44 


A QUICK DECISION 45 

was no use to call him. He knew what he 
was wanted for and would not come. On 
these occasions, one of the family had to do 
the churning, or the cream had to stand till 
next day. Roger’s foresight, however, did 
not extend beyond the evil of the day, and 
he always came home in the evening. 

Ganadoga had been told that he might 
visit a few days with his friends, because 
none of the letters to the forts in the Mo¬ 
hawk Valley was very urgent. 

At the evening meal John Stillwell re¬ 
ferred to his son Nathan, about whom both 
father and mother were so much grieved and 
worried. 

Ganadoga could give no cheering news to 
Nathan’s parents. In fact he could not give 
them any news at all. He had travelled up 
and down the Mohawk Valley. He had 
been among friends and enemies, among 
Indians and whites; he had been on scout 
duty as far west as Fort Niagara, but he 
had not seen Nathan. 

Of course, all good scouts tried to see 
without being seen. They avoided the plain 
old trails and they travelled alone or in 


46 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

parties of two or three. The white men 
often disguised themselves as Indians, and 
the Indians wore white men’s clothes, if it 
suited their purpose; and when there was 
danger of having important letters inter¬ 
cepted they came and went under cover of 
darkness. Only when they carried papers 
that were intended to mislead the enemy, 
did they manage to have them intercepted 
or lose them where the enemy would find 
them. 

All these things Ganadoga explained to 
the Stillwell family. 

“ I am sure,” he said, “ that Nathan is a 
good scout. The Americans are much better 
scouts than the British, because they know 
the country and the British do not; so the 
British have to depend much on their Indian 
allies.” 

“ I know,” replied Stillwell, “ that all you 
say is true, and for that reason I believe that 
our son may still be alive, although we have 
not heard from him for a long time. 

“ On the coast, near New York and in the 
South, where the British have no Indian 
allies, they have a hard time to find out 


A QUICK DECISION 


47 


what the plans of Washington really are, 
while he is fooling them right and left. He 
sees through all their little ruses; and no 
matter what they do, they cannot divert him 
from any big plan which he may have in 
mind. If he had the ships, the men and the 
money they have, he would have captured 
every redcoat long ago. I am not surprised 
that they call him the Old Fox. 

“ I hear that just now he is worrying 
General Howe very much by the prepara¬ 
tions he is making for besieging New York. 
Our Deputy Quartermaster here told me 
that Washington has actually set to work a 
number of masons building brick and stone 
bake-ovens on the Jersey shore opposite New 
York. Of course that can only mean siege 
operations against New York. I have not 
talked to any one about it, and I don’t know 
what the militia officers here think about it, 
but my belief is that the whole thing will 
turn out a hoax, a sort of April Fool joke 
on General Howe.” 

“ I don’t believe, Father, that we are going 
to besiege New York,” Jonas assented. 
“ We have not enough men for that and we 


48 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

have no navy. I think, when his time comes, 
Washington will suddenly forget all about 
those bake-ovens, trenches, and other prepa¬ 
rations that are worrying General Howe. 
He will leave just enough men near New 
York, so the British will not be tempted to 
come up the Hudson to attack West Point, 
and then he will quickly march his army 
south and go after Cornwallis. 

“ Of course, we may all be wrong. Wash¬ 
ington never publishes his plans. If he did, 
the British would know all about them; for 
there are still a good many Tories among 
us; and the British, of course, have their 
scouts and spies out.” 

While this talk was going, Jonas had a 
feeling that his father did not really wish to 
discuss the war with him and Ganadoga, but 
wanted to learn if Ganadoga could suggest 
a plan by which the family might secure news 
of Nathan. 

Next forenoon, while the two lads were 
talking things over in the orchard, Stillwell 
unburdened his mind to them. 

“ Lads,” he began, “ Mother is worrying 
night and day about Nathan. Ganadoga, 


A QUICK DECISION 


49 


do you know any way by which we might 
learn what has become of him? ” 

The young scout was silent a minute, as if 
he hesitated to speak what was in his heart. 

“ My father,” he replied then in the man¬ 
ner a young Indian was accustomed to speak 
to an older man, “ there may be a way. If 
you would allow Jonas to go with me to the 
Valley of the Mohawk and perhaps to 
Oswego, Ahwaga we call it, where the valley 
widens, we may find him. 

“We may have to go to the fort on the 
roaring river Neagah, and we may have to 
search for him in the British towns on the 
great River Ganawanda in Canada. Or we 
may have to look for him among the 
Shawnees or in the Illinois country. It 
might be a long journey on which one man 
is soon worn out with fatigue and loss of 
sleep.” 

“ Jonas may go with you,” Stillwell an¬ 
swered, “ and you may travel until you find 
him, or learn that he is dead.” 

“ Father, I have long wanted to go,” 
Jonas spoke up, “ but I did not have the 
heart to say so to Mother. But if I go, 


50 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 


little Jim must go with me. He would be 
most unhappy and homesick without me. 
The boys here in town call him Tory, be¬ 
cause a report spread that his father had 
deserted our cause and had gone over to the 
British. Jim has a fight every time he is in 
town. The fact is that James Abbot went 
to New York as one of our scouts, but I 
cannot tell that to the people in town.” 

“ But supposing his father comes back, 
and finds the boy gone off with you to the 
Indian country? ” Stillwell objected. 

“ James Abbot will never come back to 
Newburgh,” Jonas answered with a slight 
quaver in his voice. “ He was killed in New 
York in a fight with a British press-gang. 
When I made my last call at headquarters 
at West Point, an officer gave me a paper, 
in which I found the story only this morn¬ 
ing.” 


“ God rest his soul! ” Stillwell spoke in a 
low voice. “ There is another good man 
taken away. Then Jim may go with you, if 
you can take him.” 

“ We can take the little white bov,” Gana- 
doga assented. “ I saw that he is strong of 


A QUICK DECISION 


51 


limb and quick on his feet, and his keen 
brown eyes will read the signs on the trail 
better than the eyes of a man can read them; 
for a boy sees many things which a man 
passes by.” 

“ Then you may go as soon as you are 
ready,” said Stillwell turning toward the 
house. “ I am going to tell Mother. And 
anything on the place, which you may need, 
is yours for the journey.” 


CHAPTER VI 


A DREADED ENEMY 

It was clear that the Stillwells had al¬ 
ready talked this matter over between them¬ 
selves, for Stillwell came back in a short time 
and told the lads Mother was willing that 
Jonas and Jim should go with Ganadoga to 
the Indian countiy. 

“ She says,” he reported, “ ‘ I can never be 
happy again until I know what has become 
of my son, Nathan. So let Jonas go with 
Ganadoga to find him; and Jonas may take 
little Jim with him, because the boy is not 
happy unless he is with Jonas, and Jonas 
can take care of him better than we can.’ ” 

When Jim was told that he was to go with 
Jonas and Ganadoga to the Indian country, 
he looked in a dazed sort of way at Stillwell 
and ran out of the house. “ Where is the 
child going? ” asked Mother Stillwell as she 
stepped to the window. Jim was turning 

somersaults in the orchard. 

62 


A DREADED ENEMY 


53 


Two days later, when wind and tide were 
both favorable, Jonas and Ganadoga pushed 
their boat into the broad channel of the Hud¬ 
son. 

Jim sat in the bow, where nothing that 
eyes could see escaped his notice. Ganadoga 
as well as Jim and Jonas were clad as farm 
lads of those days. They carried enough 
blankets to make themselves fairly comfort¬ 
able in the cool nights of the Highlands, and 
some extra clothing for emergencies; but 
they had not taken a tent. 

“ We shall have to travel much,” Gana¬ 
doga had told them; “ and a tent would be 
too heavy to carry. When it rains, we shall 
find a shelter or make one; or it may be we 
shall get wet. But that will be better than 
to carry a heavy tent every day, when we 
may only use it very seldom.” 

To Jim the world was all sunshine. He 
was going on a long trip with Jonas, that 
was enough for him. The inevitable hard¬ 
ships and serious dangers ahead of the three 
travellers did not exist for him. 

Jonas and his Indian friend, although both 
at the age of youthful daring, did not under- 


54 


THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

rate the difficulty and danger of their ven¬ 
ture. In fact, Jonas, on second thought, had 
almost decided that such a venture would be 
altogether too dangerous for Jim, and that 
Jim should stay at home. But Ganadoga 
had persuaded him to adhere to his original 
plan. 

“A boy like little Jimmie,” he had argued, 
“ can go where a man cannot go. Dangers 
and evil spirits that bring bad luck to a man 
will pass a boy, and his eyes are better than 
the eves of a man. 

“ You say Little Jim is almost thirteen 
years old. He is small for a boy of that 
many years; but a boy who is small is 
stronger and can travel longer and is not so 
lazy as a boy who has grown too fast.” 

“ That is all true,” Jonas had admitted, 
“ except what you say of bad luck and evil 
spirits. Aren’t the Oneidas Christians, and 
don’t you remember that Dr. Wheelock and 
Rev. Kirkland taught you that a belief in 
witchcraft and evil spirits is a heathen super¬ 
stition?” 

“ Most of the Oneidas are Christians,” 
Ganadoga replied, “ and when Rev. Kirk- 


A DREADED ENEMY 


55 


land talks to them, they do not believe in evil 
spirits; but when he goes away, the evil 
spirits return, and the Oneidas again believe 
in them. Our fathers have believed in them 
for many generations, and all our old men 
believe in them. Some of our young men 
tell Rev. Kirkland they do not, but I know 
that they lie to him.” 

Some thirty miles above Newburgh near 
the present town of West Park, which was 
for years the home of John Burroughs, the 
travellers made an early camp. 

The bees were still buzzing in the fragrant 
hawthorn bushes, and the woods all around 
were alive with the song of birds. From 
thickets near the river came the flute notes 
and trills of the wood-thrush, while from 
the hemlock thickets higher up on the hill¬ 
side rang out the vibrant love song of the 
hermit thrushes, the shyest and most retiring 
of our woodland songsters. 

The robin has long since become a door- 

vard bird of the white man, the wood-thrush 

•/ 

is learning to live in our parks and on large 
shaded lawns; but the hermit thrush is as 
much a bird of solitudes and wild woods as 


56 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

he was in the days when the Six Nations of 
the Iroquois were spread out over the whole 
of western New York. 

Some of our birds act as if they welcomed 
the appearance of the white man. The phoebe 
will seek out every cabin in the forest, the 
swifts seem glad to forsake the insecurity 
of hollow trees for nests in deserted lumber 
camps, and unused chimneys. 

The chickadees and catbirds will eye the 
camper with voluble curiosity, but I have 
never seen a hermit thrush come near a camp 
or cabin. One hears his wild song a hundred 
times without once setting eyes on the singer; 
and if you stalk him, he only recedes farther 
into the solitude of the forest. All through 
early summer you may hear him sing near 
your camp without once seeing him. 

Jim had the campfire going by the time 
the older lads had secured the boat for the 
night. In a very few minutes tea was made, 
and Ganadoga enjoyed long draughts of 
white men’s tea that contained no bad medi¬ 
cine. He thought of asking Jonas about 
the nature of taxation and the causes and 
objects of the war, but there seemed to come 


A DREADED ENEMY 


57 


no right moment for putting the question. 
So he remained silent. This war between 
the white men, and the system and ways of 
their government, and their religion was 
something an Indian could not understand. 
It seemed to Ganadoga that there were 
things in the white man’s religion which the 
white men never put into practice. 

So the two friends sat in silence beside a 
little brook, while Jim had run off after a 
woodchuck. 

“ Shall we give him some of your medi¬ 
cine? ” asked Jonas, pointing to some young 
leaves of the skunk cabbage. 

“ No, that would be a dirty trick!” ob¬ 
jected Ganadoga, “ unless he gets very 
troublesome. I know other good medicines 
for such boys.” 

“ Jim will never be troublesome,” replied 

Jonas: “ he is not that kind of a bov.” 

/ •/ 

For a little while after dark, the friends 
sat chatting around the campfire, but Jonas 
noticed that Ganadoga seemed to be ill at 
ease. He appeared intent upon peering 
into the darkness and listening for every 
sound in the woods. 


58 


THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

“ Doga,” Jonas began to tease him in a 
friendly manner, “ you are not yet in the 
enemy’s country. That noise you heard 
came from some small animals.” 

“ Yes, I know it,” answered the Iroquois, 
“it is the little flying squirrels sailing from 
tree to tree. But I am not used to sit near 
the campfire after my evening meal; I 
always make my bed in another place. 
There is an evil spirit, an enemy,” he cor¬ 
rected himself, “ who may be trying to find 
me.” 

“An enenty? ” asked Jonas. “ You would 
not expect him at this place? ” 

“ I do not know when I shall see him. I 
onlv know that some day I shall see him. 
An Indian who has an enemy is always look¬ 
ing for him, otherwise he would not see him 
when he comes.” 

“ Who is your enemy? Is it a white man 
or an Indian? ” 

“ It is Kalohka, the son of a sachem 
among the Mohawks. At the last great 
council of the Iroquois Nation, four years 
ago in 1777 at Oswego, my father, who is a 
sachem amongst the Oneidas, as you know. 


A DREADED ENEMY 


59 


spoke for peace with the Americans, but 
Kalohka’s father made a long speech for war 
and said all the tribes of the Iroquois should 
fight for the British, whose king was their 
king. Then Kalohka came to me and said, 
‘ Ganadoga, my father is a brave warrior, 
but your father is a squaw and is afraid to 
take up the hatchet against the white rebels.’ 
As soon as he said that, Kalohka and I had 
a fight.” 

“ Did you lick him? ” asked Jim, who had 
followed every word. 

“ I would have licked him, but some men 
came and took him away.” 

“ Oh, that is nothing, Doga,” Jonas broke 
in. “ Boys fight to-day and are good friends 
to-morrow. I am sure Kalohka has forgot¬ 
ten all about it.” 

“ No, he has not forgotten it,” the Oneida 
spoke earnestly. “ He is a bad Indian. He 
is my enemy and he wants to kill me. Listen 
to me a little longer and I shall tell you 
more. 

“ The Great Council at Oswego could not 
agTee. The Mohawks and three other tribes 

o 

spoke for war, but the Oneidas held out for 


60 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

peace. So it was decided that each tribe 
should do as they pleased in this war. And 
now four tribes under Chief Brant are at 
war against the Americans and against their 
brothers, the Oneidas. 

“ Soon after the Great Council, the Mo¬ 
hawk warriors began to steal our corn and 
drive away our cattle. And some time ago 
our scouts learned that the Mohawk war¬ 
riors with many British soldiers were going 
to come to the Oneida country and kill all our 
men. Then all our people left their beauti¬ 
ful country around Oneida Lake and their 
cornfields and orchards, and came to live near 
Schenectady. They go often hungry now, 
but they are farther away from their enemies 
and nearer their American friends.” 

“ But you are not telling us why Kalohka 

* * 

wants to kill you,” Jonas interrupted the 
speaker. 

“ I will tell you that,” the Oneida con¬ 
tinued, “ if you will let me speak a little 
longer. 

“ It was the last summer we lived in our 
own country. I was at work in our corn¬ 
field because my mother is getting too old 


A DREADED ENEMY 61 

to hoe com. We had three head of cattle. 
Rev. Kirkland had given my father a cow to 
help us to live like Christians and white 
people. We had also a heifer and a big red 
calf, and I always took care of them when 
I was at home. 

“ One day I heard the cow make very 
much noise with her bell, as if she was run¬ 
ning about very fast. I thought a bear or 
a wolf had come out of the forest to kill her 
calf. I picked up my gun and ran toward 
the place, where the bell started ringing, and 
then I heard the bell go ringing down the 
trail that leads to Oswego. Then I knew 
it was not a bear or a wolf that had come 
after the red calf. 

“ When I had run about half a mile I saw 
two Indians driving away our cattle, but only 
one of them had a gun. When I came close 
up to them I gave a war-whoop, and knocked 
one of them down with the butt of my gun, 
but he sprang up again and ran away. I 
did not know him. The man who carried a 
gun was Kalohka. He tried to point his 
gun at me, but I struck it out of his hand. 
For a moment I thought that I would kill 


62 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

him, but then I rushed at him and fought him 
the way I had learned at school, the way 
white men call boxing. I saw that he was 
trying to draw his knife, but he fell down 

4/ O 

before he had a chance to do it. 

“ Then a spirit in me said again, 4 Now 
kill him and scalp him.’ But another spirit 
said, 4 No, you are a Christian. It would be 
murder to kill him while he lies on the 
ground.’ The spirits spoke very quickly one 
after the other. Then I threw his knife away 
in the bushes, and I broke his gun on a rock, 
and then he woke up and looked around. 

44 4 Go away, Kalohka! ’ I told him. 4 If 
you ever come to my father’s place again, I 
shall kill you.’ 

44 For a moment he sat and looked at me, 
because he thought I was going to kill him. 
Then he jumped up and ran into the bushes. 

44 He is a bad man. If he ever finds me 
again, he will try to kill me. I read in his 
face what was in his heart.” 

44 Ganadoga, he will not hurt you, while 
Jonas and I are around! ” called out Little 
Jim, who had been listening with breathless 
suspense. 



“Hk TRIED TO POINT HIS GUN AT ME, BUT I STRUCK IT OUT OF HIS 

hand.”— Page 61 . 








A DREADED ENEMY 


63 


And then the three picked up their blan¬ 
kets and lay down to sleep at some distance 
from their dead campfire. 


CHAPTER VII 


GANADOGA IS PUZZLED 

Before the travellers reached Albany, 
Jonas and Jim wished that they had carried 
some kind of tent with them. They had 
made camp about twenty miles below 
Albany on low ground near the river. It 
was some time before midnight when Jonas, 
who was a light sleeper, was awakened by 
the rumbling of thunder beyond the hills to 
the northwest. 

He called his companion saying, “ Get up, 
Doga. There is a storm coming, and we 
shall all get soaked and get everything wet.” 

Jonas had to repeat his call before Gana- 
doga sat up and rubbed his eyes. “You 
wouldn’t wake up till it poured down on us,” 
Jonas continued. “ You will never wake up 
when Kalohka comes after you. Get up. 
We have to find another place. This place 
is going to be a mud-puddle pretty soon.” 

“ We can sit under the boat,” suggested 

64 


GANADOGA IS PUZZLED 


65 


Ganadoga, “ till the clouds pass over. They 
may pass over in a short time.” 

“ Yes, they may,” Jonas objected, “ but 
it is more likely that it will rain all night and 
all day. It is getting cloudy all around us. 
If we cannot do any better, we must move 
to a higher place and put up some of our 
blankets for a shelter.” 

“ I know of a deserted cabin,” said Gana¬ 
doga, “ but it is half a mile away near the 
trail.” 

“ Can you find it in the dark? ” asked 
Jonas. “ It is getting very dark.” 

Ganadoga thought he could find it. He 
had slept in it one night, when he was com¬ 
ing down the trail to West Point. 

“We must go there,” Jonas decided. “ I 
don’t want to sit in the mud under the boat 
for hours; that is too much like catching 
snipe in a sack.” 

Ganadoga laughed at this and began to 
roll up his blankets. 

“Roll out, Jim, roll out!” Jonas called. 
“We are going to move.” 

“Who is coming?” Jim asked as he 
sprang to his feet. 


66 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

“ A big storm is coming, and we are going 
to get soaked if we don’t move out of here 
pretty quick,” Jonas told him. 

The three picked their way through brush 
and over rocks. Jim stumbled into a thorn- 
bush and scratched his face, but after a little 
search Ganadoga, assisted by flashes of light¬ 
ning, found the cabin. 

“ It smells a little of skunks,” said Jim. 

“ They will not trouble us,” replied Gana¬ 
doga, “ if we put our food up high, so they 
cannot smell it.” 

“ That cabin is no good,” remarked Jonas. 
“ The roof is full of holes.” 

“ I know it is bad,” admitted Ganadoga, 
“ but I fix it pretty soon. I make it dry on 
one side,” and with that he went into the 
woods with his hatchet. 

In a short time he returned with several 
large pieces of bark, which he quickly tied 
over the holes with strings of basswood bark, 
which he had stripped off some young 
sprouts near the cabin. 

“ How can you find these things in the 
dark? ” asked Jim. 

“ The Oneida boys,” the scout told him, 


GANADOGA IS PUZZLED 


67 


“ live and play in the woods and learn to 
know the trees and the bushes in the dark by 
touch and smell.” 

Very soon the rain began to come down, 
and the travellers squatted in the driest 
place they could find. On the side opposite 
them, the water fell spattering on the floor 
in big drops and streams. The side which 
had been fixed was not quite dry either. 
Ganadoga said he could not see the little 
holes in the dark, but some of the big ones 
he remembered from the last time he had 
slept in the cabin. When the worst of the 
storm was over, the three spread their 
blankets on the driest part of the floor, and 
when one side of Jim’s blanket became wet 
from a leak in the roof, Jim wriggled a 
little closer to his big friend and soon fell 
asleep in spite of wind and rain. 

When morning came, it was still raining 
and more and still more masses of low-hang¬ 
ing clouds were drifting down over the river. 

Ganadoga went outside with his hatchet, 
and although every stick and stump in the 
woods seemed to be thoroughly soaked, he 
soon returned with some dry punkwood and 


G8 


THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 


a supply of chips cut out of a dead pine and 
in a few minutes Avith the aid of his flint and 
steel he had the smoke curling up in the fire¬ 
place. And when maple and hemlock sticks 
began to crackle in the blaze, the wet and 
dreary old cabin was. transformed into a very 
homelike camp. 

The travellers made their tea and fried 
their bacon over the coals. Then the young 
Iroquois set to work on the roof. “ I shall 
make it dry,” he said, “ all dry, where we 
sleep.” 

While the white lads gathered a supply 
of dead Avood Avhich they broke and cut into 
sticks and billets for the fireplace, Ganadoga 
covered the leaks in the roof. Then they 
hung up their blankets on poles and sticks 
before the fire, for the roof had been very 
far from being really rain-proof. 

“ W e shall not travel to-day,” said Gana¬ 
doga, when he had finished and sat doAAm be¬ 
fore the fire. “ It is going to rain all day, 
and the Avind is Avrong on the river.” 

Jim had hoped that the Oneida scout 
Avould tell of his boyhood and his scouting 
experiences, or that he would tell just hoAV 


GANADOGA IS PUZZLED 


69 


he expected to find Nathan, and to what 
places he intended to lead them; but Gana- 
doga was in no talking mood. It seemed to 
Jim that he sat for hours gazing into the fire 
without batting an eye. 

Although Jonas had fastened the boat to 
a tree with a chain and padlock, Jim 
scrambled down to the river through the wet 
brush to make sure that the boat was still 
there. 

The sight of Jim, when he returned drip¬ 
ping wet, seemed to arouse Ganadoga. 
“ Little brother,” he spoke laughing, 46 go 
now and find some more wood before you 
take off and dry your wet clothes. We need 
much more wood to last us through the day 
and the night.” 

Some of the w r ood, which Jim brought in, 
Ganadoga rejected. 

“ Little Brother,” he explained, 44 these 
sticks will make no flames and leave no coals. 
They were lying flat on the ground when 
you picked them up. They are nothing but 
wet punk for all kinds of little mushrooms 
to grow on, red, black, and white ones. You 
should take these sticks out and bring in 


70 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

branches that stand up above the underbrush, 
or dead branches that you break off the trees. 
Such wood may be wet on the outside, but 
the inside is dry and sound, and the worms 
and the ants have not eaten it.” 

Then the Oneida again sat in silence look¬ 
ing into the fire, and when Jonas asked where 
his thoughts were carrying him, he replied 
that he was trying to see the future of his 
people. 

“ If the Americans win this war,” he said, 
“ will not the four tribes of the Iroquois be 
homeless, the Mohawks, the Onondagas, the 
Cayugas, and the Senecas? They say they 
must fight for the king, because they have 
made a covenant with him. But if the king’s 
soldiers win the war, will not my own tribe, 
the Oneidas, be homeless for all time? They 
are homeless now. They have left their own 
country in great fear of their brothers, who 
are now their enemies. For since the tribes 
could not agree at the last Great Council at 
Oswego, sad times have come upon the 
Iroquois nation, and brothers have taken up 
the hatchet against brothers. It is an evil, 
the like of which our oldest men cannot re- 


GANADOGA IS PUZZLED 


71 


member. It has not happened since the 
Five Nations made a sacred League of 
Peace a long time ago; and when the Tusca- 
roras came to us in distress our fathers let 
them come into the league. 

“ But now the sacred covenant chain has 
been broken, and perhaps the Great Council 
of the Iroquois will never meet again. Evil 
days have come over all my people. The 
fields and orchards of all the six tribes are de¬ 
stroyed, our bark houses are burnt, and the 
wild animals of the forest are coming back 
to live in our villages. 

“We do not understand this war, and do 
not know what is right and what is wrong. 
Joseph Brant and the Mohawk sachems tell 
us we should fight for the king. Our friend 
Rev. Kirkland tells us the king is a bad man, 
and it is wrong for him to send over his 
soldiers and big ships with guns. Most of 
the Oneidas believe that our friend speaks 
the truth, but some of our young men have 
joined the Mohawks. 

“ The white men do not fight each other 
for scalps or for hunting-grounds, and our 
people cannot understand why they fight 


72 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

each other. When Rev. Kirkland tries to tell 
us, he uses many words which are not in our 
speech, and so our men go away without 
knowing what he has spoken.” 

“ The Americans will win this war,” 
Jonas asserted with confidence, “ and I hope 
that your people will not be homeless when 
peace comes. Father and the wise men in 
Newburgh think that we shall soon hear good 
news.” 

“ There has been no good news for the 
Oneidas,” readied the Indian, “ since the 
king’s general, Burgoyne, was made a pris¬ 
oner; and that was bad neAVS for the other 
tribes of the Iroquois. 

“ Some of our people think,” the Oneida 
continued, 44 that the white people will 
always be at war amongst themselves, just 
like the Indians that are not in the Iroquois 
League.” 


CHAPTER VIII 


SCOUTING FOR NEWS 

“Your thoughts are gray,” replied Jonas, 
“ like the low clouds that drift down the 
Hudson. To-morrow, when the sun smiles 
again over the valley, you will believe with 
me that we may soon hear good news. The 
white people will not always be at war like 
the Indians. The war will soon be over, and 
then both white men and Indians will enjoy 
peace.” 

“ My eyes can see nothing but war for a 
long time ahead,” asserted Ganadoga sadly. 
“ When the white men stop fighting, some of 
the Indians will have no home, and then they 
will make more war.” 

It did rain all day and most of the night, 

as Ganadoga had predicted; but he did not 

again speak of the hopeless future of his 

people. When Jim expressed his impatience 

at the rain and the delay, Ganadoga smiled 

and said, “ This is a good camp, Little 

73 


74 THE IKOQUOIS SCOUT 

Brother. Look at the play of the flames, 
and listen to the talk of the logs in the fire 
and to the song of the rain on the roof. If 
the clouds have passed over after we have 
slept again, we shall travel to Albany. 
There we shall meet many friends, and ask 
them about the young man, whose long 
absence has made sad the eyes of his old 
parents.” 

“ If we find Nathan at Albany,” Jonas 
said with feeling, “ I shall punch him and 
make his eyes sad for not letting his parents 
know where he is. There are a good many 
young men, whom I should like to punish, 
because they are heartless to their old fathers 
and mothers.” 

The travellers remained several days at 
Albany. Ganadoga delivered a few letters, 
and he induced the quartermaster to furnish 
him and his friends something to eat and a 
place to sleep. 

“ I shall talk with the soldiers and with 
Indians, if I find any,” the Oneida told his 
friend. “ But you go to the taverns and talk 
to the white men. A few things which we 
wish to buy, you must buy of the white 


SCOUTING FOR NEWS 


75 


traders, for most of them try to cheat an 
Indian when he comes to their stores to buy 
anything.” 

One of the innkeepers remembered that 
about two, or maybe three years ago, he had 
talked with a tall blond man, who had a little 
scar on his right cheek. 

“ I am through here,” the young man had 
said. “ The war has gone dead on the Hud¬ 
son and the Mohawk. There is nothing for 
me to do. I am going west to-morrow.” 

“ I think that young man was Nathan,” 
Jonas told his friend. “ The words sound 
like Nathan’s talk, and the description fits 
him, but the innkeeper has seen or heard 
nothing of him since.” 

“ Then we must go on to the Indian 
country,” decided the Iroquois. “ We must 
paddle our boat up this river and then we 
must paddle up the Mohawk to Schenectady, 
where we shall stop with my own people, the 
Oneidas. I shall speak to them as to my 
brothers and they will give truthful 
answers.” 

Ganadoga found several Indians at 
Albany, but none of them could give inf or- 


76 


THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 


mation about Nathan. The young scout 
had really not expected to secure any news 
from them. He knew well that the whole 
Mohawk Valley had been in a state of war 
and confusion for years. Moreover, the 
Indians were exceedingly wary about giving 
information, for fear of becoming involved 
in trouble with either one side or the other. 
And as the Iroquois themselves were divided 
in this war, they not only distrusted all 
strange white men, but one Indian was 
suspicious of another. 

After a few more days of trying to dis¬ 
cover some trace of the lost white scout, 
Ganadoga said they should leave the white 
man’s town and start for the Mohawk Valley 
and the Iroquois country. 

“ This morning,” he told his friends, “ I 
walked up the river Skanehtade for some 
miles to see how the current runs, and I 
found the water muddy and the current run¬ 
ning fast and logs and branches floating 
down, which tells me that the clouds have 
poured much water into the river and that 
it will be hard work to row against the cur¬ 
rent. We must, therefore, leave our boat 


SCOUTING FOR NEWS 77 

here and travel on foot on the trails of the 
Iroquois.” 

Jonas was not impressed with the plan of 
Ganadoga to abandon the boat and to travel 
over land. 

“ You know, Doga,” he argued, “ that 
travelling overland is hard work and that a 
man cannot carry much luggage on his back. 
Jim cannot carry more than his blanket and 
his light gun, or he will soon be tired out.” 

“ My brother, I have thought of that,” re¬ 
plied Ganadoga. “ But you must remember 
that the tides from the sea do not run farther 
up the river Skanehtade, the Hudson as 
white men call it, than to Albany. After we 
leave this town the current will always run 
against us, and the Mohawk River comes 
down its own valley with a swift current. 
Both rivers are now full to the trees that 
grow on their banks, and when a river is high, 
it runs faster than it does when the water is 
low. It would be hard work rowing against 
the current. 

“ Then you must remember that the dis¬ 
tance to Schenectady by boat is twice as far 
as by trail and road.” 


78 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

Then Ganadoga drew a triangle on a piece 
of paper. “ If we go in our boat,” he con¬ 
tinued, “ we must make two sides of this 
figure, but if we take the trail, we cut across 
on one side; and I know all the short cuts 
of the trail. We shall carry only our guns 
and our blankets and enough food for one 
day; for we can get more food at Schenec¬ 
tady.” 

“We shall do as you say,” Jonas sub¬ 
mitted. 

“We must start early to-morrow,” ad¬ 
vised the Oneida, “ before the sun rises, so 
that not all the people in town may learn 
which way we went. And you must try to 
sell our boat, if you can do so.” 

Jonas managed to sell the boat for ten 
dollars to some men who were going down 
the river, and before sunrise next morning 
the three friends walked out of Albany. 

As they left the barracks, Ganadoga gave 
the countersign to the sentry, who let them 
pass without objection. 

“ Good luck to you, lads,” he spoke. 
“ Don’t let the warriors of Joe Brant get 
your scalps. And when you come back 


SCOUTING FOR NEWS 


79 


bring us some good news from George 
Washington. He will have to fight it out 
with Cornwallis. We can’t do anything 
here. We know that the Mohawk warriors 
of Brant are making raids in the Mohawk 
Valley and on the Susquehanna, but we have 
not men enough to chase the rascals out of 
the country. If we had, we would make 
them all stay with the British at Fort 
Niagara, and I reckon they would soon eat 
the king poor. 

“ Good luck to you! And don’t lose that 
small boy.” 

The people in Albany were still asleep, 
but several dogs barked lustily as the lads 
walked down a muddy side street. 

“ Everything that looks a little unusual,” 
remarked Jonas, “ will make a dog bark. 
If we did not carry guns and blankets, the 
curs would let us pass without waking the 
town.” 

“ Jonas, we are going the wrong way,” 

said Jim, after they had passed out of the 

town. “ We are going back to Newburgh, 

• 

as sure as you are alive.” 

“ Never mind, Jim,” the older lad assured 


80 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

him, “ Ganacloga is our guide and I think 
he knows what he is doing.” 

When they had gone about half a mile, 
the Oneida turned to the river bank, and 
under some overhanging bushes they found 
an Indian in an elm-bark canoe. 

After Ganadoga had spoken a few words 
to the Indian, he told Jonas and Jim to sit 
down in the bottom of the canoe. The 
canoe looked scarcely large enough to hold 
four, and both Jonas and Jim were a little 
afraid to trust themselves to the tippy-look¬ 
ing craft. 

“ You must sit still,” Ganadoga cautioned 
them, “ and you must not put your hands on 
the sides of the canoe.” 

Ganadoga was the last to enter. When 
he had taken his seat in the stern, both he 
and the other Indian took a short paddle. 
With quick short strokes they kept the 
canoe headed down-stream, and in a very 
short time they landed on the west shore 
of the Hudson about a mile below the 
town. 

Ganadoga spoke a few parting words to 
the Indian and gave him a loaf of bread. 


SCOUTING FOR NEWS 81 

Then he took up his pack and gun and led 
the way on a trail into the forest. 

“ Who was the Indian with the canoe? ” 
asked Jim, still bewildered at the way in 
which Ganadoga had led them out of the 
white man’s town. 

“ He is an Oneida of my own tribe,” re¬ 
plied Ganadoga. “ He is a scout like my¬ 
self. He is here to keep his eyes on the 
Indians that come to Albany.” 


CHAPTER IX 


THE FIRST TRAIL 

Jim's curiosity had been aroused by the 
way Ganadoga bad left Albany. He could 
understand why they left so early in the 
morning, but why had they gone a mile in 
the wrong direction? And why did they go 
in a canoe? Why did they not walk a mile 
down the road and then turn off? 

But Jim had no chance to ask any ques¬ 
tions now. Ganadoga led the way on a wind¬ 
ing trail through the forest. He did not seem 
to be going fast at all, but Jim had a hard 
time to keep up. With a slight stoop and 
his toes turned in a little, the young Oneida 
seemed to be gliding through the forest with 
long easy steps, as if travelling were no effort 
at all. Unconsciously he had struck the gait 
that was easiest for himself, but it was a little 
fast for the white boy not used to make long 
journeys on foot. 

Jim was much interested in everything he 

82 


THE FIRST TRAIL 


83 


saw along the trail, but if he loitered even a 
few seconds to watch a woodchuck, that 
crossed the trail or a red squirrel that ran up 
a tree with some strange white object in its 
mouth, he had to dog-trot after his com¬ 
panions, who had already passed out of sight. 
.And Jim had an uncanny feeling that they 
might even be out of hearing. He wondered 
why Ganadoga was in such a hurry. Per¬ 
haps he was afraid of Kalohka. 

Another thing Jim noticed on his first 
march: Jonas and Ganadoga travelled in 
silence, only now and then did they exchange 
a few words in a low voice; and when Jim 
asked any questions, they answered him as 
briefly as possible. 

After they had been walking about an 
hour, although it seemed to Jim that they 
must be half-way to Schenectady, Jonas 
asked Ganadoga to stop. 

“ It is time, Doga,” he said, “ that we eat 
our breakfast. You start out like an Indian 
runner who must make fifty miles a day, but 
Jim cannot travel so fast, and you know that 
white men like to eat a meal before they do 
much travelling.” 


84 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

They sat down near a brooklet, and Gana- 
doga took from his pack a loaf of bread, 
some butter and bacon. They ate a little of 
the bacon without cooking it, for Ganadoga 
said they should eat only a light meal now 
and should not stop to build a fire. “ We still 
have to travel almost fifteen leagues, or 
thirty miles, till we reach my people, the 
Oneidas, at Schenectady,” he told his friends. 

After their simple breakfast the three 
friends again took up the trail, and Jim 
noticed that Ganadoga avoided passing close 
to the houses of the settlers. 

A white man’s wagon road had already 
been cut out at this time from Albany to 
Schenectady, but after the spring rains it 
was in a bad condition, like nearly all Ameri¬ 
can country roads till the advent of the 
automobile. The army wagons and other 
heavy freight wagons that had to be hauled 
from Albany to Schenectady and to the 
stockades and forts still held by the Ameri¬ 
cans in the Mohawk Valley had cut such 
deep ruts into the soft ground that foot 
travel was much easier on the old Iroquois 
trails and on the game trails in the woods 


THE FIRST TRAIL 


85 


than on the main road. But Ganadoga had 
another reason for avoiding the road. He 
did not wish to be seen by any chance trav¬ 
ellers and by the farmers who lived along the 
road. 

Although Jonas had requested Ganadoga 
to travel more slowly, Jim still had all he 
could do to keep up the pace set by the 
Iroquois scout. 

Jonas offered to carry Jim’s gun, but to 
this Ganadoga objected. “ The boy must 
learn to carry his own gun,” he insisted. “ I 
do not think we shall have to fight any 
Indians or British scouts on our march to 
Schenectady, but a man who does not carry 
his own gun might just as well not have a 
gun. After the boy has carried his gun a 
few days, it will no longer feel heavy to him.” 

Spring was now in full swing over the 
Mohawk Valley. Many shrubs and flowers 
were in bloom, and the birds were all in full 
song. Jim recognized the wood-thrushes 
and vireos, the loud scream of the great fly¬ 
catcher, the drumming of grouse and the 
rattling call of the woodpeckers hammering 
on dry branches. 


86 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

But he had little time or inclination to 
heed all these sights and sounds which are 
the delight of every wide-awake boy and 
girl off on a vacation. He fancied that he 
was even now travelling through a country 
of hostile Indians just as Washington did 
when he marched through the wilderness 
with Braddock. He would not have been 
surprised if some Indian had fired at them 
from ambush. In that case, he had made up 
his mind that he would not foolishly expose 
himself like Braddock and his British red¬ 
coats; no, he would jump behind the nearest 
big tree and watch for the Indian to show 
himself first. 

He was firmly convinced that they were 
marching through a very dangerous country; 
for Ganadoga hardly ever spoke a word, but 
Jim felt that he was all the time listening 
for sounds ahead and that he was scanning 
the forest on both sides of the trail. That 
Jim had been made to march between Gana¬ 
doga and Jonas and that Ganadoga had in¬ 
sisted that Jim carry his gun was further 
evidence to him of the really dangerous 
character of the country. 


THE FIRST TRAIL 87 

In the middle of the forenoon the Oneida 
suddenly stopped and made his companions 
understand by signs that they should quickly 
leave the trail and lie down flat behind a 
log. The two white lads had scarcely 
obeyed his signals, when an Indian passed 
quickly and silently along the trail. The 
white lads caught barely a glimpse of him 
as he disappeared down the trail, but Gana- 
doga raising himself on his hands watched 
him from the moment he came in sight. 

“ Who was it? ” whispered Jim trembling 
with excitement over the terrible danger they 
had just escaped. 

“ Oneida scout,” Ganadoga answered 
briefly. 

“ If he is a friend, why didn’t you speak to 
him? ” asked Jim eagerly. 

“ He is my friend,” Ganadoga replied, 
“ but friends often talk too much. If he 
had seen us, he might have talked about us 
in Albany.” 

“ How did you know he was coming? ” 
Jim wished to know. 

“ I heard a noise,” Ganadoga told him, 
“ something like the rattle of a kettle in a 


88 


THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 


pack, and I knew that it was not a noise 
made by an animal, and so I knew a man 
was coming down the trail.” 

“ I didn’t hear it,” replied Jim, “ and 
Jonas didn’t hear it.” 

“ You did not hear it,” Ganadoga said 
with a smile, “ because you were not think¬ 
ing of man noises, you were thinking of 
other things. 

“ When I first began to run as a scout, 
the Mohawks came twice near killing me be¬ 
cause I had not learned to pick out the man 
sounds from other sounds in the woods.” 

“ How can you learn to be a good scout? ” 
asked Jim. 

“ A good scout,” answered Ganadoga, 
“ must see or hear the other man first.” 

“ Yes,” Jonas joined in, “ that is all there 
is to it. It is very simple. But now we 
have rested long enough. Let us march. 
It is almost noon, and we are not half-way 
to Schenectady.” 

About an hour later, the trail crossed the 
Albany and Schenectady road and the trav¬ 
ellers saw some wagons coming in the dis¬ 
tance, headed for Albany. 


THE FIRST TRAIL 


89 


Ganadoga went along the trail for a short 
distance. Then he left the trail and laid 
down his pack near a spring. 

“ Here, my friends,” he said, “ you may 
rest and eat, while I go to see whose wagons 
they are that are coming for Albany. Per¬ 
haps the drivers have some news from the 
Iroquois country and the war in the West. 

“ But the little brother must not eat all 
he can eat, because a full stomach is too slow 
on the trail.” 

Jonas and Jim made another meal of 
bread, butter, bacon, and water from the 
spring. Jonas would not allow Jim more 
than two large slices of bread, although Jim 
claimed that he could eat about six. 

When the two white boys had finished 
their lunch, they lay down on their blankets 
because Ganadoga had not yet returned; and 
in a very short time Jim was fast asleep. 

He awoke with a start and saw Jonas and 
Ganadoga sitting on a log looking at him. 

“ Oh, Jonas! ” he exclaimed, “ I dreamed 
that a big Indian was aiming his gun at me 
from behind a tree. How long did I sleep? ” 

Ganadoga told his friends that the two 


90 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

wagons they saw had come down from 
Schenectady; and that he had been away so 
long because one of them became stuck in 
the mud, and it took all eight horses of the 
two wagons to pull it out. There were two 
discharged soldiers from Fort Stanwix with 
the drivers. 

These men told that the garrison at the 
fort was very much discouraged and almost 
ready to mutiny. They had nothing to eat 
but flour and spoiled bacon, they were poorly 
clad and had only a few rounds of ammuni¬ 
tion. 

The rivers and creeks were all very high, 
and many of the roads and trails were 
flooded. 

The settlers in the stockades were all very 
much discouraged because Congress and 
Washington did not send them any help. 
The Indians, who had been quiet during the 
winter, had begun their raids again. Cattle 
were being stolen, and it was not safe for a 
man to go alone any distance from the stock¬ 
ades. If something were not done very soon, 
all the whites west of Schenectady would 
have to leave the country. 


THE F IEST TRAIL 


91 


“ That is all bad enough,” Jonas admitted. 
“ But Congress has neither money nor credit. 
Our paper money is almost worthless, and 
gold has disappeared long ago. 

“ Washington cannot risk splitting his 
small army; if he did, the British could 
easily destroy the different parts. Father 
says that Washington has a more difficult 
task than any general ever had. If it had 
not been for his skill and boldness and brave 
endurance, we should have lost the war long 
ago. No other man in America could have 
held out so long against the superior power 
of England. The British generals cannot 
trap him, but he strikes boldly and swiftly 
whenever they expose themselves. 

“ Father says if the French will just keep 
the British fleet out of Chesapeake Bay for a 
few weeks, Washington and Lafayette will 
soon make things lively for Cornwallis. Our 
men are better fighters now than they ever 
were, because Baron Steuben has finally 
gotten some discipline into them.” 

“ Brothers, we must go,” urged Gana- 
doga. 44 1 fear it will be dark before we 
reach the Oneida village.” 


92 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

Again they wound along the trail in 
silence. Jim was no longer so excited as in 
the forenoon, because he had begun to under¬ 
stand that caution had become a habit with 
Ganadoga, and that he would observe the 
rules of scouting while strolling through a 
farmer’s cornfield just as naturally as he did 
in the most dangerous Indian country. 


CHAPTER X 


A HARD PACE 

Jim held out well in the afternoon, but 
Jonas soon realized that they could not reach 
Schenectady in daylight. Ganadoga, how¬ 
ever, still seemed to be intent on spending 
the night with his own people, for without 
realizing it, he set a hard pace for the young 

white boy. 

%/ 

Jim gave up looking either to right or left. 

The squirrels scampering up the trees and 

scolding at the travellers no longer interested 

him. He did not seem to hear the singing of 

the birds, and even a deer snorting in a 

thicket near the trail brought no word of 

comment from him. He wished very much 

that Ganadoga would stop for a short rest, 

but he did not have the courage to ask him. 

He was leaning forward now like Ganadoga, 

but his gun seemed to be getting heavier, 

and he had to take care not to stumble over 

roots and stones on the trail. 

93 


94 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

Jim wondered if they would do such hard 
marching every day. He was getting so 
tired that he almost wished that he had 
stayed at home in Newburgh. 

The trail now wound into a low place, 
where many large roots lay exposed. Jim 
slipped on one of them and fell down flat on 
his face in the mud. Both Jonas and Gana- 
doga could not help laughing at the sight of 
Jim, as he scrambled to his feet and began 
to wipe the mud off his face and his clothing 
and was almost ready to cry. But as soon 
as he had cleaned his face and scraped most 
of the mud off his clothing, he again fell into 
his place behind Ganadoga and marched 
bravely on. 

The Oneida, however, seemed to be less in 
a hurry since Jim’s fall, and when the sun 
was still three hours high, he laid down his 
pack and said: 

“ We must go into the timber and look for 
a good camping-place. It would be too hard 
for Little Brother to march to Schenectady 
before we sleep. 

“ We must camp on the leeward side of 
the trail,” he added, “ for in that way people 


A HARD PACE 95 

who pass on the trail cannot smell our 
fire. 

“ We have not very much food, so I must 
go and look for some game.” With these 
words he took his hunting bow from his pack 
and went into the woods. 

In a very short time he returned with a 
gray squirrel and a grouse already cleaned 
and dressed. Then he put a few pieces of 
bacon inside the game and, with thin strings 
of basswood, he tied strips of bacon on the 
outside of the game. 

“ My brother,” he said to Jonas, “ a white 
hunter taught me to cook game this way. If 
you will make some white man’s tea in my 
kettle, while Little Brother helps me to broil 
the game, we shall soon make a feast, and 
the boy will forget that he was tired and fell 
in the mud.” 

Jim had already forgotten that he was 
tired, but when he smelled the sizzling bacon 
and saw the fresh meat turn brown and 
creamy white, he grew very hungry and his 
mouth began to water, and he could hardly 
wait till the meat was done, and till Gana- 
doga cut the squirrel and the grouse into 


96 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

three pieces and put the hot meat on a piece 
of clean bark. 

“ Now, Little Brother,” he said smiling, 
“ we shall make an Indian feast, and we have 
plenty of time, for the sun is still two hours 
high.” 

“ I wish to add something good to our 
feast,” said Jonas, and he toasted slices of 
bread over the red coals and spread plenty 
of butter over the hot brown slices before he 
handed them to his two hungry friends. 

Jim forgot that he had been tired and felt 
ashamed that he had regretted coming with 
Jonas and Ganadoga, and he made up his 
mind that some day he would show the boys 
of Newburgh how to make a real Indian 
feast. 

Nothing remained of Jonas’s sweetened 
tea, and Ganadoga’s game all disappeared, 
only some bread and butter was left for 
breakfast. 

Jonas wanted to go down in a hollow to 
sleep, but the Oneida objected to that place. 

“ It is still early in the season,” he said. 
“ The night is going to be cold in all the 
hollows, but the air will be warm on the hills. 


A HARD PACE 


97 


I do not know why that is so, but when I first 
travelled with my father on the trails of the 
Iroquois we always made our camp on the 
hillsides in early spring and in fall. In sum¬ 
mer we camped in shady places, where the 
wind drove the mosquitoes away. Only 
in winter we made our camp in the hol¬ 
lows, where the cold wind could not strike 


us. 

“ I remember that my father once pointed 
to a hollow, where an early frost of autumn 
had killed all the wild cucumber vines, and 
reddened the sumach leaves. 

“ ‘ Look, my son,’ he said. * The spirits 
of winter are coming out of the earth in the 
hollows. You must not make your camp 
there; for in such places the spirits of winter 
will chill your limbs and make your blankets 
wet with a cold dew, which falls on the earth 
like a gray fog. In winter you may camp 
there, for then the spirits of winter are every¬ 
where, but the cold winds cannot strike you 
in the hollows.’ 

“We must now go,” Ganadoga continued, 
“ to find a good camp on a hillside, where we 
can feel the warm breath of the spirits of 


98 


THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 


summer, who at this season dwell on the 
hillsides as my father has taught me. Be¬ 
fore we go, Little Brother, you must pour 
water on our fire, so the Mohawk scouts can¬ 
not smell our camp, for a good scout can 
smell a fire a mile away.” 

In a short time, the Oneida had found a 
level spot on a west-facing hillside. 

“ My brothers,” he said, as he laid down 
his pack and leaned his gun against a tree, 
“ we have not many blankets, so you must 
help me make a warm camp. If you will 
bring me some poles and cut some brush of 
hemlock and pines, I shall build us a brush 
house so the stars cannot look on our bed, 
for a bed on which the stars and the moon 
can look down is a cold bed, and the man 
that sleeps in such a bed wakes up many 
times in the night, because he is cold, and 
in the morning his limbs are stiff so he can¬ 
not make a long march, and his eyes and ears 
are not keen on the trail.” 

In a short time the Oneida had built a 
brush shelter in the shape of a low tent, 
using strings of basswood bark for tying 
poles and boughs securely in place, as the 


A HARD PACE 


99 


Iroquois had done for many generations in 
the construction of their bark houses. 

When the shelter was finished, the camp¬ 
ers covered the ground with leaves, dry 
grass, and boughs; and soon after sunset 
each rolled up in his blanket, Jim being as¬ 
signed to the warmest place between the 
two young men. 

Jim thought it would be fine if they could 
have a fire in front of the open shelter, but 
Ganadoga would not consent to it. 

“ Little Brother,” he said, “ an Indian 
scout never sleeps near a fire in a country 
where the scouts of the enemy may be look¬ 
ing for him. We cannot have a fire, but I 
shall close our sleeping-house with plenty of 
boughs.” 

“ He is afraid of Kalohka,” thought Jim, 
but while Jonas and the Oneida were still 
talking in a low voice, Jim fell asleep. 

The lads had forgotten to put their food 
up in a tree, and Ganadoga arose to drive 
away a skunk, who came nosing around the 
camp. Later in the night the Oneida arose 
again to drive off a prowling porcupine, but 
Jim heard neither skunk nor porcupine, and 


> * 

> > > 

> 


100 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

did not wake up till Jonas called him for 
breakfast. 

Men who travel and sleep in the open and 
do not depend on clocks and watches are 
awakened by the first light of day like the 
birds of the forest. 

The stars had just faded from the sky 
when Ganadoga arose. 

“ Brother,” he said to Jonas, “ let us make 
some sweet tea and toast some bread for the 
boy, so he can march without stumbling over 
the roots on the trail. We are still ten 
miles from the Oneida village, and I do not 
know if my people have any food to spare.” 

When breakfast was ready, Jonas called, 
“ Get up, Jim! If you are going to sleep 
like a woodchuck every night, the Mohawks 
are going to carry you off. Now come and 
eat your toast before it gets cold.” 

And while the boys were eating their meal, 
the sun rose over the trees below, and made 
countless sparkling diamonds of the dew- 
drops on the grass and flowers around them. 


CHAPTER XI 


REAL DANGER 

The march to Schenectady did not seem 
long. The sun had dried the trail, which led 
gently down-hill for a part of the distance; 
and Ganadoga had struck the pace that was 
easy for Jim. 

The sun had not yet reached its highest 
place in the sky when Ganadoga led the way 
into a secluded thicket of sassafras, sumach, 
and witch-hazel. 

“We are now less than a mile,” he told 
his friends, “ from the village of my people. 
You must now rest here and wait till I go 
and bring you some food.” 

“ Why can’t we go along, Doga? ” asked 
Jim. “ The Oneidas will know that we are 
friends, if we come with you.” 

“ Little Brother,” Ganadoga answered 
pleasantly, “ that is not the reason why you 
cannot go to the Oneida village. If you go 

with me, all the dogs will make a great bark- 

101 


102 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

ing, and all the people will know that white 
strangers have come with me, and they will 
talk to me less freely than if I come alone. 

“ For, like good white children, Indians do 
not talk freely in the presence of strangers. 
And the more strangers wish to know a 
thing, the less my people wish to tell it to 
them.” 

Before Ganadoga left his friends, he ex¬ 
changed his white man’s clothes for that of 
an Indian hunter, which he had brought 
along in his pack. 

“ If I come to the village dressed like a 
white man,” he said, “ the dogs will set up a 
great barking, just the same as if you went 
with me. But if I dress as an Indian hunter, 
I can quietly slip into my parents’ bark 
house and I can learn all the news, and none 
of my people will be suspicious, but they 
will talk freelv and tell me the truth.” 

Jim underwent a severe trial of his pa¬ 
tience on this occasion. The noon hour passed 
and there was no sign of Ganadoga. 
Another hour went by and still another 
without the Oneida’s return. The sky be¬ 
came cloudy and Jim thought it would soon 


REAL DANGER 103 

be dark, and it looked as if it might rain 
during the night. 

“ These sassafras bushes would make a 
fine shelter in a big rain,” he said, “ with 
nothing to eat! I wish we had gone with 
Ganadoga to the Indian village.” 

“ You might as well quit grumbling, Jim,” 
Jonas admonished him. “ If you are going 
to act like a peevish little girl, you had bet¬ 
ter go back to Newburgh now. Here you 
will have to do what Ganadoga asks you to. 
The Indian country is no place for spoiled 
babies. Why don’t you lie down and go to 
sleep? ” 

Jim did not reply to these words, but he 
rolled up in his blanket, head and all, so the 
flies could not annoy him, and tried to for¬ 
get that he was hungry. 

It was late in the afternoon when they 
heard the sound of a whistle, which was the 
signal by which their Oneida friend was to 
announce his return. A moment later he 
stood before his white friends. 

“ The young boy is very hungry,” he said, 
“ but I could not come back sooner and bring 
you food. My brother brought in a deer at 


104 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

noon, which he killed a long way off. My 
mother has cooked some venison and baked 
some cakes of corn meal for you.” 

Jonas and Jim both found the food very 
good, but they were interested to know if 
Ganadoga had heard any news of Nathan. 

“ You cannot get big news from Indians 
so quickly,” Ganadoga told them with a 
smile. “ I have to stay with my people 
several days and talk to them of many things, 
and, maybe, smoke with the old men, as they 
sit in the sunshine. It is only in that way 
that they will tell me all they know.” 

While the white boys were eating, Gana¬ 
doga sat in silence, as if he were again think¬ 
ing of the future of his people. 

When they had finished eating he told 
them to take up their things as he was going 
to show them a place where they could stay 
over night. 

“ Aren’t we going to sleep in the Oneida 
village? ” asked Jim, much disappointed at 
this plan. 

“No, Little Brother,” Ganadoga an¬ 
swered, “ you must not be seen in the village 
till I have talked with my people.” 


REAL DANGER 


105 


Then the Oneida led the way into the 
timber for half a mile and stopped in front 
of a vacant cabin in a small clearing. The 
clearing had been planted with corn. 

“ That is my brother’s cornfield,” he told 
them. “ When you get tired of resting, you 
may work in his field. You will find a hoe 
in the cabin.” 

The cabin looked very desolate. The 
door and two small window sash, the stove, 
table, and chairs had all been taken away. 

“ The soldiers carried everything away,” 
Ganadoga told them, “ when they helped to 
build huts for the Oneidas. The white man 
who built this house and cleared the field 
was killed in the fight at Cherry Valley. 

“ You must sleep on the floor above,” 
Ganadoga cautioned, “ and you must keep 
all your things there. When you go up, you 
must pull the ladder after you, and you must 
do no loud talking after you lie down to 
sleep. I must now go back to my people, 
but I shall come back some time to-morrow. 
Little Brother may go and fish in the creek, 
but you must not leave your guns in the 
house when you go away; you must always 


10G 


THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 


take them with you. It may be that the 
Mohawk scouts of Joseph Brant will come 
to this country, and if they see that you have 
no guns, they will rush up and take your 
scalps or lead you away as prisoners.” 

When Ganadoga had left, the white lads 
took their packs to the loft. Some Indians 
or white scouts had evidently slept there be¬ 
fore, and they had left the hay on which they 
had slept. 

“ Let us make our beds now,” said Jonas, 
“ for the loft has no window and we shall 
not be able to see a thing after dark.” 

It seemed very lonesome after Ganadoga 
had gone, and it grew dark early, because a 
bank of heavy clouds was coming up from 
the west. 

“ I think it is going to rain,” said Jim, as 
they were sitting under a tree near the clear¬ 
ing. “ I can hear thunder. Aren’t you 
afraid to sleep in this house, Jonas? I wish 
we could sleep outside under the trees.” 

Jonas did not answer the boy’s question. 
“ We can’t sleep under the trees,” he said. 
“ They would not shelter us against the rain, 
and it is safer to sleep in the loft. We 


REAL DANGER 


107 


might as well go up and lie down. You 
must be tired, Jim.” 

“No, I am not a bit tired now,” replied 
Jim, “ but I am scared. The house with 
no door and windows looks awfully spooky. 
I never slept in a place like that.” 

The storm came up slowly but at last it 
broke with great fury. 

“ Jonas, are you asleep? ” whispered Jim. 
“ Just listen how it pours down. We would 
surely get soaked out under the trees. I am 
glad that Ganadoga found a house for us 
that has a better roof than the house on the 
Hudson. The Mohawk scouts would not 
travel in this kind of weather, would they, 
Jonas? ” 

“No, I guess they denned up somewhere, 
when they saw the storm coming, if any of 
them are in the neighborhood. But I 
don’t think the raiders would come so far 
east.” 

The lads could see the flashes of light¬ 
ning only through the chinks between the 
logs, but there were terrible crashes of 
thunder in the forest around them. Jim 
crept a little closer to his big friend, and 


108 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

when the crashes of thunder had passed over 
to the east, whence they came back in long 
rumbling peals, he fell asleep. 

When the lads awoke, the forest was 
ablaze in a flood of sunlight under a deep 
blue sky. The birds were singing every¬ 
where in the woods. A pair of robins were 
busy hunting worms in the cornpatch and 
a phoebe, whose nest had been built inside the 
vacant house, was calling from the roof, 
jerked his tail and darted at passing insects. 
The young corn seemed to have started 
growing actively, but a tall shattered white 
pine on the edge of the clearing told of the 
violent storm and lightning of the night. 

Jim tried fishing in the creek, while Jonas 
sat leaning against a tree with two loaded 
guns close at hand. 

“ Jonas, why don’t you fish? ” asked Jim. 
“ I wish I could find some big angleworms 
like those we had at Newburgh. I don’t 
think fish bite much on grasshoppers.” 

“ You had better leave your line in the 
water,” said Jonas. “ Maybe you will 
catch a bullhead or catfish. I will go and 
hoe the corn, and you can sit down and watch 



Jim tried fishing in the creek.— Page 108 .. 






























REAL DANGER 


109 


me. Perhaps Ganadoga will get some of 
the com if his brother raises a good crop.” 

The next day early in the afternoon Gana¬ 
doga returned. “ I am awfully glad you 
have come! ” Jim greeted him. “ I was 
pretty scared last night, but it did not rain 
on our bed. I tried to catch some fish, but 
they will not bite on grasshoppers.” 

“ Did Jonas fish, too? ” asked Ganadoga. 

“ No, he sat down with the guns and 
watched me.” 

“ That is right,” the Oneida said. “ I for¬ 
got to say that only one of you must do the 
fishing.” 

“ Why couldn’t both of us fish? ” asked 

Jim. 

Ganadoga hesitated. 

“ One man can catch them in that little 
creek,” he answered, looking at Jonas; and 
Jonas thought he understood what the 
Oneida really meant. 

Ganadoga had brought some more veni¬ 
son and corn cakes, and while they were eat¬ 
ing their supper Ganadoga’s older brother, 
Huahgo, came to look at his corn. 

“ He will sleep in the house with us to- 


110 THE IKOQUOIS SCOUT 

night/’ Ganadoga told his friends, “ an3 
to-morrow he will go and hunt deer. He is 
a good hunter.” 

The campers went to bed early and Jim 
was soon sound asleep. 

But when it had grown quite dark some¬ 
thing happened which kept the three young 
men awake all night. 

Some men came into the cabin, and spread 
their blankets on the floor below. 

The three campers informed one another 
by touch that each one knew what was hap¬ 
pening below. 

The strangers, however, believed them¬ 
selves entirely safe. They talked freely in 
Mohawk of their exploits and plans. Al¬ 
though the Mohawk dialect differs from the 
Oneida, Ganadoga and his brother could 
understand all the talk of the raiders and 

learned several material facts. Thev had 

«/ 

come up from the Susquehanna country, and 
they intended to turn westward now and 
harass the line of stockades to Fort Stanwix. 
These strangers also mentioned Little 
Beard’s Town in the Genesee Valley and 
Fort Niagara. 


REAL DANGER 


111 


Very soon, however, the raiders became 
silent, and the men in the loft knew from 
their heavy breathing that they were sound 
asleep. 

“ We could quickly slip down and scalp 
them,” whispered Huahgo. 

“No, my brother,” objected Ganadoga, 
“ the Great Spirit must never see the blood 
of our brothers on our hands. The Mohawks 
are Iroquois; they are our brothers.” 

“ There are three of us,” suggested Jonas. 
“ We could tie them up with ropes cut from 
our blankets.” 

“ Fighting in the dark is bad medicine,” 
Ganadoga objected. 64 You cannot tell 
whom you are fighting, and the men have 
knives.” 

The aversion of all Indian tribes to attack 
during the night was for the frontiersmen a 
most fortunate trait of Indian character. 
Their favorite time for attack was at the first 
sign of daylight, but very rarely did they 
make an attack during the night. 

“ We must wait till daylight,” Ganadoga 
continued, “ and then I will tell you what 
we should do. But we must put on our 


112 THE IKOQUOIS SCOUT 

moccasins now, and Little Brother must put 
on his.” 

“ We cannot awake Jim now,” protested 
Jonas. “ He might begin to talk and get 
noisy. I can put his moccasins on for him 
while he is asleej).” 

“ It is good, my brother,” said Ganadoga. 
“You and Huahgo may now lie down to 
sleep. I shall call you when the Mohawks 
arise.” 

“ Doga,” Jonas whispered, “ I thought I 
understood you Indians, but I see I don’t. 
Why don’t we slip down on them? We 
could have them tied hand and foot before 
they got their eyes open.” 

“ No, my brother,” Ganadoga persisted. 
“ It is bad medicine to fight in the dark, and 
we do not know how strong they are. I will 
call you when they wake up.” 

“ Call me when they wake up? ” Jonas re¬ 
peated in disgust. “ I suppose they will 
not be so strong when they are awake. Doga, 
I thought you had some sense.” 

He was going to add, “ You are just as 
full of foolish superstitions as any old 
woman of your tribe,” but he merely added: 


REAL DANGER 


113 


4 'All right, Doga. Wait till the rascals 
wake up. Give them a chance to take more 
scalps. But you needn’t call me; I’ll stay 
awake.” 


CHAPTER XII 


THE MOHAWKS 

“What a mean fix we are in!” Jonas 
thought as he stretched himself. “ If these 
Mohawks wake up and discover that we are 
in the loft, they simply have to bolt for the 
brush and they have made us prisoners in the 
cabin. We wouldn’t dare to show a face 
outside of the walls.” 

However, just now, there was nothing to 
be done but wait for daylight. 

It was the first time in his life that Jonas 
had sat up in the dark and tried not to fall 
asleep, and the night seemed to be endless. 
For a while his anger at what he regarded 
as Ganadoga’s foolish procedure kept him 
wakeful. As time dragged on in the dark, 
he listened to the hoot of the owls outside, 
to the barking of a dog in the distance, and 
to the even breathing of the Mohawk sleep¬ 
ers. 

His two Indian friends also seemed to be 

asleep. At least they were lying perfectly 

114 


THE MOHAWKS 115 

still. The Indians were surely strange peo¬ 
ple. 

“ If these two Oneidas were to be burned 
at the stake at daylight, they would lie down 
and go to sleep,” thought Jonas. “ I reckon 
the working of the Indian mind is beyond 
the understanding of a white man.” 

From time to time Jonas raised himself in 
his blankets and looked through the chinks 
in the log wall. He could see just enough 
in the darkness to perceive that both of the 
Oneidas had pulled their blankets over their 
heads. 

“ That’s another thing a w T hite man cannot 
do,” thought Jonas. “ It keeps the mosqui¬ 
toes off their faces in summer and it keeps 
them warm in winter, but very few white men 
can sleep that way.” 

At last Jonas thought he saw a faint trace 
of daylight, and he turned quietly over on his 
face so he could watch the Mohawks below 
through a crack in the ceiling. He could 
just faintly see their forms now. Just like 
the Oneidas, they were wrapped up in their 
blankets, head and all. 

“ Flow could they know when daylight 


116 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

was coming, with their heads all wrapped up? 
It must be another case of Indian instinct/’ 
thought Jonas. 

And then one of the sleepers moved. The 

next moment he unwrapped himself, nudged 

his fellow and both of them rolled up their 

blankets, took their guns and left the house. 

If Ganadoga and Huahgo had been 

asleep, they had quickly become wide awake, 

and before the Mohawks had gone twenty 

paces the Oneidas were watching them. 

“ They are taking the trail to the little 

stony brook,” Ganadoga said in a whisper. 

“We must follow them and cut them off! 

Get up, Little Brother! ” 

Jim arose with a start. 

“Where are mv shoes?” he asked as he 

«/ 

felt about him in the darkness. 

“ You’ve got your moccasins on, Jimmie,” 
Jonas told him. “ I put them on for you. 
Just put on your hat and take your gun. 
We are going after some Mohawks.” 

“We must go, brothers!” urged Gana¬ 
doga. “Leave your bundles and follow me!” 

Ganadoga followed the trail of the Mo¬ 
hawks only a short distance till he came to a 


THE MOHAWKS 


117 


place where the footprints of the raiders 
could be clearly seen on the soft ground. 
Then he stopped a moment. 

“ My brothers,” he said in a low voice, 
“ they are following this trail which makes 
a big bend toward the midday sun. We 
shall quickly march straight through the 
woods on a deer trail, which Huahgo and I 
have often followed. We walk fast and 
maybe we reach the ford of the brook before 
they do. You must not shoot unless I 
shoot, and you must not step on sticks on 
the trail.” 

It did not seem to Jim that Ganadoga was 
following any trail at all; he seemed to be 
cutting straight across the woods. But Jim 
did his best to keep up and was careful not 
to break any sticks. 

After they had marched about half an 
hour, they crossed a small brook on a fallen 
log. Then Ganadoga swung over to the left 
and in a few minutes they struck a plain 
trail, which crossed the same brook on a 
number of large stones. 

Ganadoga looked at the soft ground near 
the trail, but he did not set foot on the trail. 


118 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

“I see deer tracks,” he whispered, “ but 
no tracks of moccasins. They will come 
soon. We must go up a little way to a 
thicket of pines. 

“We lie down here,” he said, when they 
reached the spot. “ You must lie still and 
make no noise.” 

Jim could feel his heart beating like a 
hammer, and he was breathing hard through 
his mouth. 

The four men had a clear view of the trail 
for several rods down to the brook, and di¬ 
rectly in front of them was an open dry 
spot near the trail, where travellers had 
rested or camped. 

Jim was just getting control of his excite¬ 
ment, when two big Indians stepped out of 
the forest on the other side of the brook. 
For a moment they looked around, then they 
took off their small packs and bent down to 
drink. They had no cups but dipped the 
water out with their hands. 

Ganadoga put his forefinger on his lips 
and his friends understood that he wished 
them to keep absolutely still. 

The Mohawks came slowly up from the 


THE MOHAWKS 


119 


creek, carrying their packs in their hands. 
Then they leaned their guns against a tree, 
and sat down in the open spot. Quite de¬ 
liberately they opened their packs, took out 
a little venison and began to eat, both of 
them facing the creek with their backs turned 
on the four men in the thickets. According 
to Indan custom and instinct they <were 
watching their back trail. 

At last Ganadoga gave a signal with his 
hand. The next moment he and Huahgo 
stood between the surprised Mohawks and 
their guns, while the two white lads faced 
them from the other side. 

“ Brothers,” said Ganadoga, “ you are our 
prisoners.” 

The two big men glared at Ganadoga and 
then glanced at their guns only a few yards 
away. 

For a moment Jonas thought they would 
rush at Ganadoga with their hunting-knives, 
but they realized that they had been com¬ 
pletely surprised and were really prisoners. 

“ Brothers, we know that you are hun¬ 
gry,” Ganadoga continued. “ You may eat 
your meat before you come with us.” 


120 


THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

The two Mohawks fell to eating again, as 
if being surprised and made prisoners was 
an everyday matter with them, and neither 
of them had thus far spoken a word. 

When the prisoners had finished their 
meal, Ganadoga again spoke to them. 

“ You know, brothers/’ he said, “ that 
prisoners may not carry loaded guns. My 
white brother will now draw the loads out 
of your guns before we return the guns to 
you.” 

But now the oldest of the two arose and 
spoke. 

“ My brother,” he said, “ it was the will of 
the Great Spirit that you should make us 
prisoners. We lost our ammunition when 
our canoe upset in the rapids of the Susque¬ 
hanna, and the loads in our guns are all we 
have, but it is fair that you should draw 
them out. The wind in the tree-tops filled 
our ears, so we could not hear you spring 
out of the pines, and both of us were looking 
east, because we expected no danger from 
the west.” 

After Jonas had drawn the shots from the 
two guns, Ganadoga told the captives that 


THE MOHAWKS 121 

they would all march back to the house where 
they slept last night. 

Jonas thought the captives looked very 
much surprised at this order, but they made 
no reply. 

“ You will walk slowly,” Ganadoga told 
the captives, “ and you will not try to run 
away. We have all our guns loaded and we 
shall walk behind you.’’ 

When they reached the house, Ganadoga 
told the captives they must go into the house 
and stay there. “ My white brothers will be 
outside and they will shoot you if you leave 
the house.” 

“ Jonas,” asked Jim, when the lads had 
posted themselves on their guard dut}^ 
“what is he going to do with them? Do 
you think we shall have to watch them to¬ 
night? ” 

Huahgo now went back to the Oneida 
village, while Ganadoga was busy clearing 
a spot under an elm tree near the creek. 

Once one of the captives looked out of the 
window opening, but when he saw Jim ready 
with his gun, he quickly drew back his 
face. 


122 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

When Jim saw the smoke of a fire near 
the creek, he became very much excited. 

“ Jonas,” he whispered, “ I think Gana- 
doga is setting a stake to burn the captives. 
I don’t think he ought to do that. They 
didn’t hurt any of us; but you know that is 
what the Iroquois often do with their cap¬ 
tives.” 

In the middle of the afternoon, Huahgo 
returned with some more venison and corn 
cakes and with a large kettle, and Ganadoga 
and Huahgo were busy at the fire for some 
time. 

Then Ganadoga came and spoke to the 
captives, who followed him to the fire, and 
Ganadoga asked Jonas and Jim also to come 
to the fire and bring their guns. 

The day had been full of surprises for Jim, 
and here was another. There was no stake 
set for the burning of captives. A kettle was 
hung on a tripod over a fire, and in the kettle 
Ganadoga dropped a liberal quantity of the 
white man’s tea, which Jonas had brought 
from Newburgh, and sweetened it with 
maple sugar. 

The prisoners sat down and their captors 


THE MOHAWKS 


123 


formed a circle around them. There was 
plenty of venison and corn cakes, both of 
which Ganadoga and Huahgo heated over 
the fire. The tea was divided in two por¬ 
tions. Ganadoga filled his small kettle for 
Jonas and Jim, and the four Indians drank 
from the larger kettle of Huahgo. 

Jim was surprised at the quantity of veni¬ 
son and cakes the two prisoners ate. “ It 
was lucky for them,” he thought, “ that we 
captured them. It is plain that they have 
been starving.” 

After the feast Ganadoga arose and spoke 
to the prisoners. He spoke in Mohawk and 
Jonas translated it to Jim as well as he could. 

“ Brothers,” spoke Ganadoga, “ the Great 
Spirit has shown you plainly that he does 
not approve of the things the Mohawk war¬ 
riors are doing. You have lost your canoe 
and your ammunition. Last night you lay 
down to sleep in the white man’s house, and 
the Great Spirit did not tell you that two 
Oneidas and two white men were above you 
in the same house. We could have killed you 
last night and we could have killed you this 
morning. 


124 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

“ But the Great Spirit does not wish to 
see brothers make war against brothers. The 
Oneidas and the Mohawks have been broth¬ 
ers ever since our fathers exchanged the first 
belts of wampum, when they formed the 
League of the Iroquois. 

“ The Covenant of the Iroquois is much 
older than the covenant between the Iroquois 
and the King of the English.” 

Then Tanuhoga, the oldest of the captives 
arose. “ Brother,” he said, “ you have 
spoken the truth. Mohawks and Oneidas 
should not raise the hatchet against each 
other. But evil days have come upon our 
people. At the Great Council of Oswego, 
as you know, all the tribes were for war with 
the Americans, except the Oneidas and 
Tuscaroras. And now the Six Nations are 
divided and a great curse has fallen upon all 
our people. Our villages are all burnt, our 
fields are destroyed, our men are being 
killed in a war to which we can see no end, 
and our women and children are suffering 
much from hunger and sickness. But it is 
not for us to talk much. We are your 
prisoners, and you may kill us. The Mo- 


THE MOHAWKS 


125 


hawk warriors are not afraid of death at any 
time.” 

“ The Mohawks are brave warriors,” 
Ganadoga replied, “ but they are fighting on 
the wrong side in this war. The Oneidas 
will not stain their hands with the blood of 
their brothers and I offer you this belt of 
wampum as a token of what I have said. If 
you take this belt, we shall know that you 
will not make war against the Oneidas and 
against our American brothers.” 

“ Brothers,” the Mohawk replied, “ we 
accept your hand and the wampum you 
offer. And if we meet you or your white 
brothers on the trail, we shall know that you 
come not with an uplifted hatchet, but that 
you come as friends who spared our lives, 
when the Great Spirit gave us into your 
hands. You gave us food when we were 
hungry, and gave us plenty of the white 
man’s tea, which we had not tasted for a 
long time.” 


CHAPTER XIII 


GANADOGA HAS NEWS 

During the next few days, the white lads 
had many opportunities to observe the ways 
of the Indians. 

The two Mohawks did not at all behave 
like the stolid gloomy warriors as Jim had 
pictured all Indians. 

They joked and told funny stories and 
laughed very much like white men on a visit 
to old friends. Jonas and Jim could not 
understand what thev said, but they could 
see that both the Oneidas and the Mohawks 
were having a good time. 

Jim soon grew tired of just sitting around; 
but the four Indians, it was clear, had no 
desire to do anything else. 

“ Our Mohawk brothers have travelled a 
long way,” Ganadoga told his white friends, 
“ and they are now hungry and tired and 
wish to eat with us and rest.” 

Toward evening Huahgo brought in an¬ 
other deer. 


126 


GANADOGA HAS NEWS 


127 


“ It is a lucky thing,” said Jim, “ that 
Huahgo knows where he can get deer, other¬ 
wise Ganadoga could do nothing else but 
carry food to our camp.” 

Jim himself spent most of his time fishing. 
He dug industriously in the cornfield for 
worms, but was not able to find any. 

“ Little Brother,” Ganadoga told him, 
“ you will find no worms in this field. 
Worms are found only in old fields, and this 
is a new field. Most of our people think 
that the worms were brought to our country 
by the white men, by the Dutch farmers, 
from whom the Iroquois received their apple- 
trees and other fruit-trees; and horses, cattle, 
and sheep and hogs. The Indians only had 
dogs and the deer and other wild animals of 
the forest. 

44 My father told me that the Indians 
planted only corn and beans and squash, but 
no wheat and rye and oats. 

44 There were no angleworms in our gar¬ 
dens and no honey-bees in the hollow trees 
before the white men came to our country.” 

Jim’s tireless pursuit of grasshoppers, and 
his joy when he pulled a wriggling chub out 


128 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

of the creek were a source of much amuse¬ 
ment to the Mohawks. 

“ How do they catch them? ” Jim asked, 
a little vexed. “ I wish they would show me 
if they know a better way.” 

“ The Iroquois fish with a splint basket, 
or with a pointed stick.” 

“ With a pointed stick? ” Jim asked. “ I 
should like to see them do it.” 

“ The Indians fish only where fish are 
large and plentiful. They couldn’t catch 
any in this little creek,” Ganadoga admitted 
to Jim’s satisfaction. 

When the Mohawks had rested three days, 
they prepared to leave. Huahgo had 
brought in another deer, the meat of which 
was dried and smoked over a slow fire in the 
usual Indian way, a method now well known 
to many white hunters and campers . 1 

In one respect Jonas and Jim were dis¬ 
appointed. Ganadoga would not take them 
to the village of the Oneidas. 

“ It would not be well,” he explained, 
“ that all my people should know that two 
white men are with me. If all the Oneidas 
1 Described in “The Silver Island of the Chippewa,” p.48. 


GANADOGA HAS NEWS 


129 


know it, all the scouts of the other tribes will 
soon know it. You must not forget that an 
Indian scout and runner sometimes travels 
a hundred miles in a day, and they tell one 
another what they have seen. If all the 
Oneidas know where we are, Kalohka will 
soon know it.” 

“ But I should like to see an Indian bark 
house,” pleaded Jim. 

“ Most of the Oneidas do not live in bark 
houses at this place,” Ganadoga told the 
boy. “ They live in huts and shacks built 
of boards and logs, and some live in houses 
made of canvas, which are very cold in 
winter. My people are very poor, and many 
of them have been hungry and sick during 
the winter. We may find an Iroquois bark 
house on our journey up the Mohawk Val¬ 
ley.” 

When the time came for leaving, the two 
Mohawks shook hands with the Oneidas 
and also with the white lads, and disappeared 
along the trail on which they had come as 
prisoners. 

Ganadoga and his brother, with the white 
lads, turned northward to the Mohawk 


130 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

River. In the bend of the river west 
of Schenectady, Huahgo led the way to a 
canoe hidden in a patch of tall weeds. In 
this elm-bark canoe, the four crossed the 
Mohawk, and then Huahgo bid farewell to 
his brother and the white lads and returned 
down-stream to his people. 

“We shall now travel along the old trail 
of the Iroquois, which many generations of 
our people have worn deep into the earth. 
Our trail runs along on the north side of the 
river,” said Ganadoga, “ but our two Mo¬ 
hawk friends will follow the old Iroquois 
trail south of the river. 

“ I have learned that my people, the 
Oneidas, knew nothing about Nathan; be¬ 
cause most of our scouts are afraid to go 
west of Fort Stanwix, where all the country 
is held by the British and the hostile Iroquois 
warriors. But our two Mohawk friends saw 
Nathan at Fort Niagara two summers ago.” 

“Did Nathan join the British?” asked 
Jim. 

“ No, he did not,” Ganadoga answered. 
“ Some Seneca warriors brought him in as a 
prisoner, but the Mohawks did not know 


GANADOGA HAS NEWS 


131 


whether he had been exchanged, or sent to 
Montreal, or whether he was still a prisoner 
at Fort Niagara.” 

Fort Niagara was built by the French 
about 1730. In the French and Indian 
War, Sir William Johnson captured it from 
the French. During the Revolutionary 
War it was held by the British and was the 
gathering point for the Iroquois warriors, 
who fought on the British side. At Fort 
Niagara the Indians were supplied with pro¬ 
visions, arms, and ammunition, and to Fort 
Niagara they took their American prisoners. 
To the credit of the British commander, it 
must be said that he did all within his power 
to alleviate the suffering of these unfor¬ 
tunate people. Whenever he could do so, 
he secured their release from their Indian 
captors and brought about their exchange. 

Fort Niagara is now a United States mili¬ 
tary post. Many of the old French struc¬ 
tures, including the main buildings, the bar¬ 
racks, and even the bake-house are still in a 
fairly good state of preservation. In the 
old cemetery sleep many officers and soldiers 
who gave their lives to the making of Amer- 


132 


THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 


ica. In the cemetery, on the old earth walls, 
and in the abandoned moats, grow many 
gnarly wild hawthorn-trees that look as if 
they might be a hundred years old. 

Every one who can do so should visit the 
old fort, and the whole of it should be perma¬ 
nently preserved as one of the most impor¬ 
tant landmarks of the romance of American 
history. 

If it were not for a sea-wall, which the 
United States Government has built, the 
ruins of the fine old historic fort would years 
ago have crashed into Lake Ontario, for the 
waves of the lake are constantly encroaching 
on the southern shore. In the days of the 
French regime, the French officers had their 
garden between the fort and the lake; but at 
the present time there is only space enough 
left for a drivewav between the fine old stone 
fort and the sea-wall. 

The War Department, however, has no 
funds to keep the old buildings in repair, and 
some patriotic society should take hold of 
their permanent preservation. 

The old historic fort is easily accessible to 
visitors by electric railway from the town of 


GANADOGA HAS NEWS 


133 


Niagara Falls, where thousands of travellers 
stop every year to yiew the greatest water¬ 
fall in America. 

But from this digression we must return 
to our story. 

When Huahgo’s elm-bark canoe had dis¬ 
appeared down the Mohawk, Ganadoga 
motioned to the white lads to sit down for a 
council. 

“ My friends,” he said, “ we are now pass¬ 
ing into a country which is not really held 
by the Americans. Those Americans that 
are still in the country live in stockades, and 
have to herd their cattle under a guard. I 
have learned that General Willet will come 
to this country to drive out the raiding- 
parties of British and Indians, but we cannot 
travel with the soldiers of General Willet, 
because they would know nothing of Nathan. 

“ We must risk the long journey to Fort 
Niagara, and we may be seen at any time by 
raiders and scouts of the Mohawks and 
Senecas and other hostile Iroquois tribes, 
who know a white man by his clothes a long 
way off. 

“ For that reason, you must now put on 


134 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

the Indian clothes which I have brought for 
you from the Oneidas. Your white man’s 
clothes you must carry in your pack, so you 
may have some dry things to put on when 
the rain has soaked through our hunting- 
clothes. 

“ When the trail is dry, we shall wear 
moccasins, because they make less noise than 
white man’s shoes; but when the ground is 
muddy, we shall wear our shoes, because 
moccasins are not good for travelling on a 
wet trail. 

“ We shall not travel much on the roads 
and on the old trails of the Iroquois. We 
shall walk through the forest and travel on 
the deer trails that run in the same direction 
as the Iroquois trails to Fort Niagara. 

“ When we reach Oneida Lake, where my 
people used to live, we may be able to find a 
canoe or we may build one. Then we can 
paddle down the outlet into Lake Ontario, 
and then we can travel on the lake to Fort 
Niagara; for travelling by water is much 
easier than to travel by land, if you do not 
have to go against the current.” 

Many other things Ganadoga told them, 


GANADOGA HAS NEWS 


135 


things that proved of great value to them 
at a later time when their experienced guide 
was not with them. 


CHAPTER XIV 


THE MYSTERIOUS GOBBLER 

Both of the white lads were glad to be on 
the trail once more. 

“We must now begin to live like Iroquois 
scouts on the trail,” said Ganadoga, when 
they made their first noonday halt in a grove 
of old black-walnut trees on the edge of a 
clearing, from which they could look about 
in every direction. “ To-day we shall have 
to eat some of our venison, but I shall try to 
secure some meat every day with my hunting 
bow.” 

Jim soon discovered on the ground a large 
number of walnuts, which, for some reason, 
the squirrels had failed to gather in the pre¬ 
ceding autumn. 

“ We can live on nuts,” he said, “ if we 
do not find any game. The squirrels live 
on them.” 

“ Yes they do,” admitted Jonas, “ and 
they have nothing else to do but crack nuts 
all day.” 



136 


THE MYSTERIOUS GOBBLER 137 


“ They can’t crack them,” Jim objected. 
“ They have to gnaw holes through the shell 
to get at the meat. They cut two holes into 
a walnut, but in a butternut they cut only 
one hole.” 

Jonas looked skeptical at this bit of Jim’s 
woodcraft, but the Oneida took his part. 

“ Little Brother has used his eyes,” he 
remarked, well pleased. “ That is the way 
the bushy-tail people eat nuts. The wal¬ 
nuts have a hard wall in the middle, so the 
squirrels cut into them from both sides. The 
little bushy-tail people do not need much 
food, but we should need more than a bushel 
of nuts every day, and it would take a long 
time to find them and crack them. In this 
place we are safe, but in many places the 
cracking of nuts would make a dangerous 
noise that might betray our camp to the 
British and Iroquois scouts.” 

There was one thing Jim did not like about 
travelling along the Iroquois trail. Gana- 
doga would allow no talking. “ We can 
talk in camp, but good scouts do not talk on 
the trail,” was his inflexible order. 

In the afternoon, the Oneida killed a 


138 THE IBOQUOIS SCOUT 

woodchuck that had ventured a little too far 
from his burrow. 

While the sun was yet several hours high, 
Ganadoga left the trail, and after he had 
gone a short distance up a small stream, he 
stopped, built a fire and roasted the meat of 
the woodchuck. 

“ My brothers,” he invited the white lads, 
•/ 

“ here is our supper. Eat all you want. 
To-morrow we may find another wood¬ 
chuck.” 

Jim felt a little squeamish about eating 
the meat, which he had never tasted, but 
Ganadoga encouraged him, saying: 

“ It is good meat, Little Brother, although 
the woodchuck does not have a pretty white 
tail like the rabbit.” 

When the meal was finished, the travellers 
put out their fire, and Ganadoga selected a 
sleeping-place on a somewhat open hillside 
about a mile from their campfire. 

A little before sunset, a grouse began to 
drum in the timber just below an open 
grassy patch. 

Jim wished very much to go after the 
bird with Ganadoga’s hunting bow. 


THE MYSTERIOUS GOBBLER 139 


“ We may not find any game to-morrow,” 
he argued; “ and I do not think that wood¬ 
chuck is as good as grouse.” 

But Ganadoga would not allow Jim to go. 
“ A good scout,” he explained, “ does not ap¬ 
proach timber over open ground if he can 
help it. The woods are thick, where the bird 
is calling, and you would only lose an arrow 
and not get the bird.” 

When it was time to go to sleep, Gana¬ 
doga asked Jonas to keep watch till the big 
dipper had swung one-third through its cir¬ 
cle. 

“ I think I know what you mean, Doga,” 
said Jonas. “ I shall keep a sharp lookout, 
and shall call you before I lie down.” 

Thus ended the first day on the Iroquois 
trail, hut Jim was already so nearly asleep 
that he did not know that Jonas and Gana¬ 
doga had made arrangements to take turns 
watching. 

On the second day Ganadoga seemed to 
travel with still more care. The first day 
they had crossed a few open spaces, but now 
Ganadoga travelled entirely in the woods and 
once he sent Jonas and Jim off into the 


140 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

timber, while lie secreted himself near the 
trail. But while even Jim had a feeling that 
Ganadoga was on guard against some threat¬ 
ening danger, none of the three saw or heard 
anything unusual. 

For their sleeping quarters Ganadoga 
again selected a place that was open on two 
sides. The place was near a deserted farm, 
and Jim discovered a small flock of turkeys 
left behind by the owner. 

“ Doga, let us go and get some of them,” 
pleaded Jim. u We shall need the meat. 
We killed nothing to-day but a rabbit and 
Ke was very lean.” 

But the Oneida would not allow it. He 
said they did not yet need the meat very 
badly, and that to-morrow he would lead 
them through a good game country. But 
when a little later a turkey began to gobble 
in the timber just across the opening from 
their camp, all three of the travellers became 
very much interested. 

“ Doga, he is right in there, near the big 
elm! ” Jim pointed out. “ Let us go after 
him. There may be others with him.” 

Again the gobbler sounded his loud call. 


THE MYSTERIOUS GOBBLER 141 


“ He’s a big one! ” whispered Jim, much 
excited. “ Let me go after him! ” 

“ I will go after him,” Ganadoga decided. 
“ You and Jonas stay here under cover. If 
I miss him, he may come this way;” and 
Ganadoga left with both his hunting bow 
and his gun, going carefully around through 
the timber. 

About half an hour passed under great 
suspense for the white boys, for the turkey 
again uttered his call several times. 

Then just after the turkey had gobbled 
again, a shot rang out from Ganadoga’s gun 
to the right of the gobbler, and the white 
boys heard some large creature break away 
through the woods. 

“ Listen, Jonas, listen!” spoke Jim. 
“ Doga scared up a deer. Didn’t you hear 
it break away? ” 

It seemed a long time before the Oneida 
returned. When, at last, they saw him com¬ 
ing noiselessly through the timber, they were 
much surprised that he did not bring the 
turkey. 

“ Oh, too bad, Doga,” called Jim, “ you 
missed him.” 


142 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

“ Yes, I missed him,” the Oneida ad¬ 
mitted. “ My brothers, the gobbler was not 
a turkey. ITe was an Indian.” 

For a moment the lads were speechless. 

“ Why did he make that noise? What 
did he want of us? ” Jim was the first to ask, 
his eyes staring with surprise. 

“ Doga, why didn’t you kill him? ” mut¬ 
tered Jonas, his face flushed with anger as he 
thought that Jim would have walked into 
the raider’s trap if Ganadoga had not 
objected. “ Why didn’t you kill the scoun¬ 
drel? ” he repeated. “ Was it Kalohka? ” 

“ No, it was not Kalohka. I could not 
tell whether he was an Onondaga, or Seneca, 
or Mohawk. He is a bad Indian, but I 
could not kill him. He is my brother, he is 
an Iroquois. He is a young man, only a lad. 
He got scared and ran away. An old war¬ 
rior would have lain down flat on the ground 
and waited.” 

“ He is a big scoundrel,” Jonas asserted, 
“ no matter who he is. A scoundrel sneak¬ 
ing around in the brush trying to murder 
innocent people who have done him no 
harm.” 


THE MYSTERIOUS GOBBLER 143 


“ It is the way the Iroquois have always 
made war. They do not know any other 
way,” the Oneida replied. 

“ That fellow is not waging war,” Jonas 
objected, “he is planning murder. I 
would have killed him. He is just vermin.” 

“ Yes, brother,” the Indian replied, “ I 
know that white men will make war against 
their brothers, but the Great Spirit does not 
wish to see the blood of our brothers on our 
hands. His life was in my hands. He did 
not attack me. Our Father Kirkland 
taught us the commandments of the white 
man’s God, and one of them says, ‘ Thou 
shalt not kill.’ More Indians would become 
Christians if they saw more white men keep 
the commandments of their God.” 

“ I beg your pardon, Doga. Y r ou are 
right. It would have been murder to kill 
him. He was not attacking you; and he is 
an Iroquois, your brother.” 

“ It would have been foolish, too,” Gana- 
doga continued. “ If I had killed him, his 
friends would have tried to avenge his death. 
Now they may leave us if they are with him; 
because they know that we shall fight, 


144 TIIE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

and that it is not easy to surprise us or fool 
us.” 

Ganadoga, however, was not willing to 
spend the night in the place they had chosen. 

“ It is bad medicine,” he claimed, “ for a 
scout to sleep in a place where he has had a 
fight, if he can get away. That is what my 
father taught me.” 

“ Doga, you are a superstitious heathen,” 
Jonas objected in a friendly way, “ with your 
talk about bad medicine.” 

“ I do not know better words,” the Oneida 
replied, “ to say in the white man’s talk what 
I mean. We must not stay here overnight. 
No Iroquois scout would sleep here if he 
could get away.” 


CHAPTER XV 


A BAD NIGHT 

As quietly as a deer leaves his bed and 
slips away unseen into a thicket, the three 
left their camp, and the white boys followed 
Ganadoga’s lead into the darkness. 

One who has never travelled at night can 
hardly imagine what utter darkness may 
pervade a dense forest on a cloudy night, 
after the leaves have attained full size. 

Ganadoga led the way into a ravine, where 
he struck a plain trail. 

The sky was heavily overcast. The season 
had been warm and rainy and the foliage was 
already very heavy. It was impossible to see 
the trail, and the lads followed it by feeling 
it with their feet. 

Again and again the leader missed the trail 

at a short bend. Then he would stop and 

take a few steps in different directions. 

When his feet touched soft dead leaves and 

forest litter, he knew that he was off the trail, 

145 




146 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

but when he struck clear well-packed ground, 
he knew that he had found the trail again. 
It was a case of travelling by touch. 

From time to time Ganadoga stopped to 
listen. Behind them from some pool came 
faintly the high-pitched ringing song of the 
toads, and far ahead of them from the hills 
came the deep bass notes of a big owl. But 
near them there was not a sound, not even a 
leaf was stirring, and it seemed to the lads 
as if they could hear the silence. 

“It is awfully spooky,” Jim whispered, 
when Ganadoga stopped once more to listen. 

“No, Little Brother,” replied Ganadoga, 
“ the forest is spooky in moonlight, but not 
in black darkness.” 

“Will they follow us?” whispered Jim, 
shivering with excitement. 

Ganadoga did not think they would. 
“ Indians,” he added, “ do not like to travel 
at night. But early in the morning, as soon 
as the sky turns gray, they will surround our 
camp, unless they have become afraid of us.” 

Once a startled grouse arose with great 
bluster and whirr of wings near the trail, and 
a cold shiver ran up Jim’s back, and he 


A BAD NIGHT 147 

thought he could feel all the hair on his head 
rise up. 

A little later, a scared buck snorted a few 
rods away from the trail, and for a second 
Jim could feel the scalping-knife of an In¬ 
dian run around his head, although it was 
not the first time that he had heard the snort 
of a startled buck. 

They might have been slowly picking their 
way for an hour, when Ganadoga halted. 

‘‘We shall leave the trail here,” he spoke 
in a very low voice. “ Each one must go by 
himself. Take long steps, put your toes 
down first, and lift your feet up high, so 
the weeds will not show where we left the 
trail.” 

After groping their way through the tim¬ 
ber, Ganadoga found a place among the big 
limbs of a fallen elm. 

“ This is as good a place as we can find in 
the darkness,” he told his friends. “ We 
may lie down to sleep, for no enemies can 
surprise us here, even if they had heard us 
leave our first place, and I do not think they 
did.” 

For some time, however, sleep would not 


148 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

come to them; Jim especially was wide 
awake. 

The night was really pitch-dark. The 
vast, mysterious chorus of insects and hylas, 
which enliven the nights of midsummer, had 
not yet tuned up their small fiddles, drums, 
and rattles. Only the larvae of borers could 
be heard working in the dead logs, making a 
dull and low grinding and sawing noise, like 
invisible ghost carpenters. 

After a while, however, Jim heard another 
sound. It was somebody moving about on 
the ground as if in search of something. By 
this time Jonas and Ganadoga seemed to be 
asleep; but Jim could feel his heart beating 
faster as he lay and listened. 

There could be no mistake about it. Who¬ 
ever it was, he was coming nearer. Perhaps 
the Mohawk scouts could smell white men. 
Ganadoga claimed that he could smell deer. 
The noise was growing louder. It was 
headed straight for the camp, and Jim could 
keep still no longer. 

“ Doga,” he whispered, “ the Mohawk is 
coming after us, listen! ” 

The Oneida sat up straight, seized his gun 


A BAD NIGHT 


149 


and listened, while the noise kept coming 
nearer. 

“ Little Brother,” he spoke kindly, “ that 
is not the Mohawk. It is the animal with 
the black-and-white flag. He digs worms 
and grubs at night, but now he has smelled 
our food.” And then he said something in 
Oneida, which Jim did not understand. 

“ What did you tell him? ” asked the white 
boy. 

“ I told him to go away, that we have no 
meat to give him,” answered Ganadoga. 

“ He isn’t going, he is coming on,” said 
Jim. “ He is going to muss us all up! ” 

But when Ganadoga spoke once more in 
a somewhat louder voice, the animal started 
off in another direction. 

Jim and his Indian friend again lay down, 
and the white boy soon fell asleep. 

But there was not to be much sleep for 
them that night. 

In less than an hour Ganadoga called the 
white lads. 

“ Wake up, brothers,” He called, “ the 
thunderbird is rising behind the hills, and it 
will rain. We must make a shelter.” 


150 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

With the aid of the lightning, Ganadoga 
spread two blankets over the outstretched 
limbs of the fallen elm, and fastened them 
with strings of elm bark and pieces of wood. 
The campers had four blankets with them. 
The scout spread one on the ground, and 
the three men covered themselves with the 
other blanket. 

Very soon the rain began to fall, gently 
and slowlv at first, so that Jim could almost 
count the drops. Then it increased to a gen¬ 
tle summer shower, but very soon the clouds 
seemed to open and the water poured down 
in little streams. The blankets sagged and 
leaked freely. Jim tried to wriggle into a 
dry place, but Ganadoga said there was 
nothing to be done but to sit up and let it 
rain. “ That is the way of scouting,” he 
added; “ you cannot always find a dry place 
to sleep in.” 

The camp was surely not a dry place to 
sleep in, it was a place so wet that one could 
not sleep at all. Big drops came down on 
the covering blanket, first in one place and 
then in another and it was not long before it 
was wetted through and the cold water 


A BAD NIGHT 


151 


soaked through the clothing to the skin of the 
campers. In a little while the ground on 
which they were sitting also became wet, for 
the rain came down so heavy that the ground 
around them could not absorb it all. 

Jim thought of changing to another place, 
but he realized that every other place would 
be still more wet, so there was nothing to be 
done but sit still and wait for daylight; and 
Ganadoga said it was still an hour before 
midnight. 

“ Doga, did you ever camp in as bad a 
place as this? ” asked Jim. 

“ Yes, Little Brother, I did,” the scout 
asserted. “ Many times I have camped in 
places much worse, when I had no blankets 
and was all alone.” 

“ Would you like to go back to Newburgh, 
Jim? ” asked Jonas. 

“Not I!” protested Jim. “But I am 
thinking how fine it would be to sleep in 
our hayloft to-night and listen to the rain 
falling on the shingle roof.” 

As the hours dragged slowly on, the night 
grew so cold that it seemed to the campers as 
if there were frost in the air. 


152 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

The rain had ceased and the stars came 
out. 

“ It will be a fine day to-morrow,” re¬ 
marked the Oneida. “ We must lie down 
and try to sleep.” 

Before very long Jim began to feel warm 
between his two big friends, and although the 
blankets were wet, all became warm as the 
campers lay still in the same position. 

“ This is not very bad,” said Ganadoga. 
“ When it is winter, and it rains all day and 
all night, and the rain turns into a wet snow, 
that is bad weather for sleeping outdoors.” 

When, at the first dawn of day, Jim was 
called to get up, he realized that he had 
actually been asleep. 

“ He is a good camper,” said the Oneida; 
“ he can sleep in wet blankets.” 

The lads wrung out their shelter blankets, 
rolled them up in a pack by themselves, and 
the other two blankets in another pack, and 
started off through the forest. 

“ Each must go on his own trail,” Gana¬ 
doga told them, “ and you must not disturb 
the weeds more than you can help.” 


CHAPTER XVI 


UNEXPECTED DANGER 

The travelling was the worst Jonas and 
Jim had ever experienced. Their Iroquois 
guide would not follow any trail, but always 
struck right through the forest. Every bush 
and every leaf was still wet with big glisten¬ 
ing drops. 

Jim soon understood why Ganadoga had 
insisted that they start out in their wet cloth¬ 
ing. Their legs and the lower part of their 
bodies could not have been more wet if they 
had been travelling through a pouring rain. 
In fact, the weeds and the dripping brush 
seemed to beat the cold moisture fairly into 
their skins. At first Jim tried to pick his 
trail, but very soon he realized that it made 
no difference where he did go, because he 
could not become any wetter than he was. 

They might have travelled about two 

hours, when they came to the foot of a hill. 

153 


154 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

“ We must now each take a stick,” said 
Ganadoga, 44 and lift up the weeds on which 
we have stepped so that nobody can tell that 
we have gone up on this hill.” 

Very soon they came to a clear spot en¬ 
tirely surrounded by trees. Here the grass 
and weeds were already dry, because the sun 
shone right on the open spot from the south¬ 
east. 

“ We shall stay here to-day,” said Gana¬ 
doga, 44 and dry our things, because it is not 
good to travel all day in wet clothes. Little 
Brother might get sick.” 

“ I don’t feel sick,” declared Jim, 44 but I 
am as wet as if I had fallen in the river.” 

With their hatchets and hunting-knives 
they cut poles and sticks and hung up their 
blankets and wet clothes in the sun, but the 
Oneida would not let them build a fire. 

44 The scouts,” he explained, 44 who tried 
to sneak up on us, cannot be very far from 
this place. They did not travel last night. 
Even if they are not following us, they are 
somewhere not far away, doing what we are 
doing: They are drying their things. 

44 1 shall now go down the hill and watch. 


UNEXPECTED DANGER 


155 


Ifl come back and tell you we are in danger, 
each man must quickly roll up his pack and 
start on his own trail for the big lone elm 
3^ou see down in the valley. We shall all 
meet under that big tree, and each man when 
he approaches the tree must give a low 
whistle like the little wood pewee, so the man 
who is there first may know that a friend 
is coming. 

“ But you must not build a fire while I 
am away. If the Mohawks saw our smoke 
they would know at once where we had gone, 
and they would again stalk us and try to 
ambush us. You may eat some food, but 
you must not get impatient, for I may be 
gone several hours.” 

The time soon began to drag heavily for 
Jim and he began to listen anxiously for the 
return signal of Ganadoga. 

“ He is gone a long time,” he said wist¬ 
fully to Jonas. “ What do you think he is 
doing so long? I wish he had not gone back 
alone. We could have gone with him and 
left our things here.” 

Jonas tried to calm the fears of the boy 
by telling him that Ganadoga would be safer 


156 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

alone than in company and that he had ex¬ 
pected to be gone several hours. 

But Jim could not suppress his anxiety. 
“ We ought to go and look for him,” he sug¬ 
gested. “ He may need help.” 

“ We should only increase the danger,” 
Jonas objected. “ If Doga returned in our 
absence, he would be very much worried and 
would not know what to do. If you are 
going to be a good scout, you must learn to 
be patient and not keep worrying all the 
time.” 

“ There,” whispered Jim after a short 
time. “ I heard the call. Listen! ” 

It was the call by which the Oneida had 
promised to announce his presence, and Jim 
quickly repeated the call and then listened 
intently. 

Again both lads listened until they heard 
the plaintive note a second time. “ Pee-o- 
wee,” it sounded very plainly now. 

“ It isn’t Doga,” Jim spoke sadly. “ It 
is the little bird himself. He is up in the 
tree over there,” and he pointed in the direc¬ 
tion from which the sound had come. 

Again both lads waited patiently, and Jim 


UNEXPECTED DANGER 


157 


tied up his blanket and the few things he 
carried on the trail. 

Another half hour might have passed, 
when again they heard the melancholy note 
of the woodland flycatcher, and again Jim 
answered it promptly. 

Within a few minutes they heard the note 
again, and it came plainly from the low 
underbrush. 

“ It is Doga!” exclaimed Jim under his 
breath. “ Let us go and meet him.” 

“ No,” Jonas insisted, “ we must not leave 
this place. Sit down and answer.” 

A few moments later Ganadoga stood in 
the open space before them. His face was 
flushed as if he had been walking fast, and 
Jonas caught at once the serious expression 
in his eyes. 

“ My friends,” Ganadoga spoke. “ They 
have found our trail, and we must leave this 
place. It is hard for men walking in the 
dark to hide their trail.” 

“ Why not stay here and fight them?” 
asked Jonas. “ I should like to know what 
that turkey gobbler looks like.” 

“ The Great Spirit does not want us to 


158 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

spill the blood of our brothers,” Ganadoga 
objected. “ We must not begin the fight. 
We shall try to throw them off our trail. 
And this is not a good place for us to fight, 
because there are four of them. They could 
surround us and it would be veiy difficult 
for us to get away if we could not beat them 
off. 

“ Walk down to the tree, each on his own 
trail. Go slow. The Mohawks will not be 
here for some time. I saw them on the hill 
where we heard the gobbler.” 

Jim was the first to reach the big tree, and 
it seemed a long time before the other two 
men arrived, although in reality they came 
only a few minutes later. 

“ Now, we shall strike out for the wagon 
road in the valley,” said Ganadoga, “ and 
when we reach that, we shall make our plans 
to lose the scouts.” 

“ Why can’t we catch them and make good 
Indians out of them? ” argued Jonas. “ I 
would rather fight than run away. We 
made two good Indians at the deserted 
cabin.” 

“ Brother,” replied Ganadoga, “ you talk 


UNEXPECTED DANGER 159 

now like many white men talk, who think 
they must always fight. 

“A good Iroquois scout fights when he has 
to, and he slips away when it is wiser to slip 
away than to fight. We cannot surprise 
these four men as we did the two men who 
slept below us in the house. I do not want 
to travel back to Newburgh and make sad 
the heart of your parents by telling them 
that their two sons were scalped by the Mo¬ 
hawk scouts, because I let them do a foolish 
thing. 

“We shall try to lose the Mohawks, but if 
we cannot, and they follow us again, then 
we shall fight them.” 

When they reached the road they saw a 
wagon drawn by four horses coming west¬ 
ward. The road ran along on high land and 
was in a fair condition in spite of the hard 
rains. 

“ Brothers,” said Ganadoga, “ set your 
guns against this tree, so that the white men 
will know we are not enemies.” 

There were four armed men on the wagon 
and Ganadoga told them that he and his 
white friends were American scouts on their 


1G0 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

way to Fort Stanwix, or Fort Schuyler, as 
it was called at that time. 

“ You will not find much of Fort Stan¬ 
wix,” the leader of the men told them. “ A 
big flood has washed away a part of it. Some 
men whom we met on the road told us the 
news.” 

The men were quite willing that the three 
travellers should ride with them to the next 
stockade some ten miles to the west. They 
were glad to give a lift to men who showed 
the effect of hard travelling, and they were 
more than glad to strengthen their party 
against attacks from Indians, who were 
known to infest the roads and make all travel 
very dangerous. 

Before they reached the stockade it began 
to rain again, and the white lads were 
happy when Ganadoga informed them 
that they would spend the night in the 
stockade. 

The three travellers had a big supper of 
fresh beef, corn cake, and sassafras tea 
sweetened with maple sugar. This was the 
only food in the stockade, but Ganadoga and 
his friends felt as if they had been invited to 


UNEXPECTED DANGER 161 

a banquet, for they had eaten nothing since 
their breakfast on the hillside. 

“ I cannot offer you a bed,” said the cap¬ 
tain of the stockade to the lads after supper, 
“ but you may spread your blankets on the 
hay in the shed. One side of the shed has a 
good roof.” 

The lads assured him with many thanks 
that they would rather sleep in the hay than 
in the best of beds. 

“ Thank the Lord,” said Jonas, “ we don’t 
have to sit up in the rain to-night, and we 
don’t have to worry about Indians.” In a 
very few minutes all three of them fell asleep 
to the patter of the rain on the roof. 


CHAPTER XVII 


MORE BAD NEWS 

Before the lads left the stockade next 
day, they told the men of the wagon to be on 
their guard against Indian raiders on their 
return trip eastward. . 

Ganadoga, himself, was much disturbed 
by the news that Fort Stanwix had been al¬ 
most destroyed by high water. The spring 
had been unusually rainy. All the creeks 
were running bank full, and the Mohawk 
was at flood height. Ganadoga knew that 
Fort Stanwix was located in a bend of the ’ 
upper Mohawk, where the river had a swift 
current, and it seemed quite possible that the 
stream might have washed away a part of 
the fort. 

In case the fort was so badly injured that 
it had to be abandoned, the journey of Gana¬ 
doga and the white lads would become even 

more dangerous than it had been thus far. 

162 


MORE BAD NEWS 


163 


Fort Stanwix had been the most westerly 
stronghold of the Americans since the be¬ 
ginning of the war in 1775. If it were lost 
or abandoned, the frontier, in control of the 
hostile tribes of the Iroquois and of the 
British would, at one stroke, advance about 
twenty-five miles farther eastward to Fort 
Herkimer. 

General Sullivan had destroyed the towns 
and fields of the four hostile tribes, but had 
not captured the warriors or defeated them 
in a decisive battle. The Indians had re¬ 
treated into the forest and had returned, 
when General Sullivan left the country. 

They were now so embittered that they 
compelled many of their prisoners to run the 
gauntlet, and many they even tortured and 
burnt according to their ancient savage cus¬ 
tom. 

The three scouts remained one day in the 
stockade in order to rest, dry their blankets 
and clothing and allow the trails and roads 
to become more passable. 

If they had been willing to wait two or 
three days, they might have gone as far as 
Fort Herkimer in company of some soldiers, 


164 THE IBOQUOIS SCOUT 

who were to take a load of provisions to that 
fort. 

However, both Jonas and Ganadoga felt 
that they had already lost too much time and 
that the season was fast slipping awa}^. It 
was now the last week in May, and they had 
not even reached the Indian country. 

“ Let us start out to-morrow,” advised 
Jonas. “ We can make Fort Herkimer in 
one day, if we get an early start.” 

Ganadoga agreed to this plan and the lads 
got everything ready before they retired for 
a second night’s rest in the hay shed. 

It was still dark when Ganadoga called 
his friends. “ Brothers,” he said, “ we must 
leave before daylight. I fear that the Mo¬ 
hawk scouts are somewhere in hiding near 
this stockade. If they see us leave, they 
will dog our trail again, like the hounds 
which some white men use to run deer.” 

They marched briskly along through an 
open forest, and at times on well-beaten 
game trails, but they avoided the road and 
open fields as much as possible. 

At noon they rested an hour, and Gana¬ 
doga even let the white lads build a small 


MORE BAD NEWS 165 

fire to make a kettleful of tea and heat the 
rare wheat-flour biscuits, which they had 
brought from the stockade. 

“ I have seen no signs of Indians,’’ said 
Ganadoga, “ and we shall now march rapidly 
to Fort Herkimer, before any enemies can 
catch up with us, even if they have seen the 
smoke of our fire.” 

The three arrived at Fort Herkimer be¬ 
fore sunset. They were in high spirits, be¬ 
cause they had heartily enjoyed the brisk 
march on a fine summer day and they felt a 
keen appetite for the soldiers’ mess table, no 
matter how plain the fare might be; and it 
consisted of nothing hut salt pork and corn 
cakes. 

The news which they heard at this fort 
was not cheering. A part of Fort Stanwix 
had been swept away by a flood early in May 
and on the night of the thirteenth the other 
portion had burnt. Fort Stanwix was no 
more, and the garrison was now at Fort 
Herkimer. 

All the country west of Fort Herkimer 
was now held by the British and hostile 
Indians, with the exceptions of a few posts 


1G6 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

in the Illinois country, and one at the falls 
of the Ohio. These posts the heroic George 
Rogers Clark had, by his genius and sheer 
boldness, conquered for the Americans, and 
he was holding them now. 

There were also a number of small wooden 
forts in Kentucky held by such American 
pioneers as Daniel Boone and other men of 
his type. But all points on the Great Lakes 
such as Oswego, Fort Niagara, and Detroit 
were held by the British. 

Fort Niagara was the outfitting point for 
the hostile Iroquois, and from Detroit the 
Western Indians made raids into what is now 
Kentucky, and against the frontier of 
Pennsylvania and Virginia. 

All Kentucky at that time was a part of 
Virginia. 

Through the heroic work of Clark, the 
Americans held possession of what is now 
Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and Illinois, and 
this fact was of the greatest importance in 
the later peace negotiations with England. 

At Fort Herkimer, Ganadoga met a white 
scout, who confirmed the report that Nathan 
had been brought as a prisoner to Fort 


MORE BAD NEWS 


167 


Niagara by a band of Seneca warriors; but 
what had become of Nathan he did not know. 
He had heard a rumor that the tall young 
white man had escaped and had made his 
way to Fort Pitt, now the city of Pitts¬ 
burgh in Pennsylvania. 

From Fort Herkimer the three travellers 
struck out westward toward Lake Oneida, 
where Ganadoga’s people lived for several 
centuries in the primitive contentment of 
men of the Stone Age. 

That was before the white men came to the 
Iroquois country, and brought with them 
firearms, knives, and other implements of 
steel, but also brought many diseases and the 
terrible firewater. 

In those days the Iroquois lived at peace 
amongst themselves, and easily defended 
their country against all outsiders. 

Now Ganadoga knew that he would find 
the towns of his people burnt, their orchards 
destroyed, and their cornfields overgrown 
with weeds and brush. 

For hours the three marched through the 
green forest, fragrant with the fresh young 
foliage of early summer. The birds sang and 


168 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

called in the tree-tops, and in the open glades 
butterflies played in the sunlight, and bees 
and humming-birds were busy on the wild 
flowers; but there was no smile on Gana- 
doga’s face and his thought wandered far 
away to the past and the future of his peo¬ 
ple, and to the dangers ahead on the long 
trail. 

“ Little Brother is hungry,” he said, when 
the sun stood high over the forest. “We 
shall sit down at this cold spring and eat. 

“We have now left the white man’s coun¬ 
try,” he said when the meal was over. “ The 
country is dangerous, and we may meet en¬ 
emies. The Indians will think that the 
Great Spirit has sent fire and water to de¬ 
stroy the American fort. 

“ They are waging a cruel war. I learned 
that the British chief at Detroit has told 
them not to take prisoners. 

“ I am in less danger than you are. I am 
an Oneida with the Oneidas, and I am a 
Mohawk with the Mohawks and the British. 
My father was an Oneida sachem, hut my 
mother was a Mohawk, and I speak the 
language of both people. 


MORE BAD NEWS 


169 


“ But you, my friends, are in great dan¬ 
ger. And when we march through the for¬ 
est and when you lie in your blankets this 
evening, you should think over if you should 
go farther with me. You have suffered hard¬ 
ship and you have braved dangers. It may 
be that in the morning you should go back 
toward the rising sun that you may bring 
good news to your parents, for my eyes see 
much danger on the trail ahead.” 


CHAPTER XVIII 


JIM GOES HUNTING 

The distance from Fort Herkimer, the 
present town of Herkimer on the Mohawk 
River to Oneida Lake is only about forty 
miles, but the travellers made only about ten 
miles on this day. 

“ I hear again the voice of the thunderbird 
to the west,” said Ganadoga, when they had 
eaten their noon lunch, “ and I see black 
clouds looking over the tree-tops. We must 
stay here and make a shelter before it begins 
to rain.” 

The white lads thought they would have 
to peel some trees and make a bark shelter, 
as was often done bv both white men and 
Indians in those days, but Ganadoga had 
a surprise for them. 

Jim had noticed that he carried a much 

larger pack than he did when they entered 

Fort Herkimer. As Jim had by this time 

developed a real camper’s appetite, he had 

170 


JIM GOES HUNTING 


171 


hoped that their guide had secured a good 
supply of food, but now the Oneida took 
from his pack a big piece of canvas, such as 
Jim had seen the soldiers and teamsters 
spread over goods, which they could not 
otherwise protect from the rain. 

Ganadoga put four stout sticks in the 
ground and tied four poles to them in such 
a way that sticks and poles made the frame¬ 
work of an open shack. For strings he used 
the bark of the leatherwood, a large bush of 
which grew near the spring. 

“ The bark of the leatherwood,” Ganadoga 
told Jim, “ makes better strings than any 
other bush or tree in the woods. It is tougher 
and more pliable than willow, basswood, or 
elm. But it does not grow everywhere and 
you cannot always find it when you need 
strings.” 

By this time Jim was busy making more 
strings of leatherwood bark and assisted 
Ganadoga to stretch and tie the canvas over 
the poles. 

“ Doga, that is a good job,” commented 
Jonas, who had been clearing the ground of 
brush and stones. “ It will make a better 


172 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

shelter than the blankets you put up during 
the night.” 

“ No man can make a good shelter in the 
dark,” Ganadoga replied with a smile. “ We 
must gather some dry wood. If it rains 
much we may wish to build a fire. 

“ We have struck a bad season,” he con¬ 
tinued; “ the air feels as if it would rain every 
day. That is the reason why I brought 
along a piece of white man’s tent-cloth. To 
make a shelter of bark takes too much time 
and makes too much noise.” 

The lads had not built their shelter any 
too soon, for the rain poured down and one 
shower followed another as seems character¬ 
istic of a rainv season in the Hudson and 

•/ 

Mohawk Valley. 

Jonas had enclosed three sides of their 
shelter with brush; only the front toward the 
east he had left open. 

A woodland shelter such as they had built 
will keep persons and things from getting 
soaked, but not from becoming damp. Dur¬ 
ing a rain the air is saturated with moisture, 
the ground becomes wet all around the camp 
or shelter, everything one touches is wet; and 


JIM GOES HUNTING 


173 


more or less of fine spray is beaten through 
the canvas, if the rain is at all heavy or 
comes down with a strong wind. 

Summer rains in the Eastern States, as far 
west as Central Illinois, generally are ac¬ 
companied by little or no wind, but west of 
Illinois, an open shed tent would offer poor 
protection, because the rains are nearly al¬ 
ways attended with more or less wind. 

The greatest care of the travellers during 
a storm was to keep their guns dry. Gana- 
doga had secured from his people near 
Schenectady three pieces of oiled buckskin, 
and these he tied around the locks of their 
guns whenever a shower came up. In those 
days of flintlocks and flash-pans, guns often 
became useless in wet weather. 

After it had grown dark, the campers 
built a small fire of dry sticks under their 
canvas to roast strips of fresh beef which 
Jonas had bought at Herkimer. This was 
an unexpected treat to Ganadoga and Jim 
and revived their spirits; but as the light of 
the small bright fire was reflected from their 
faces, all the world around lay as if buried 
in utter darkness. 


174 THE IKOQUOIS SCOUT 

It rained all night, but the shelter did not 
leak, and Jim, at least, slept as well as if he 
had spread his blanket on a hayloft. 

As it was too wet to travel next day, Jim 
was allowed to hunt for small game near the 
camp. He left about noon with Ganadoga’s 
hunting bow, but he carried no gun. 

“ Little Brother must learn to go off by 
himself,” the Oneida remarked to Jonas. 
“ Some day you and I may have to leave for 
a day or two; so he must learn to be alone.” 

Jim was to be gone only an hour, but two 
hours passed and there had not been a sign of 
the boy. 

Jonas became much worried. Could he 
have been captured by Indian raiders? Per¬ 
haps he had been bitten by a copperhead. 
The woods were full of those dangerous 
snakes. Most likely Jim was lost and Jonas 
decided that he would never again let the 
lad get out of sight and hearing. 

“ Brother,” Ganadoga tried to quiet him, 
“ vou worry like a woman. Why do you 
think of snakes, Indians, and boy being lost? 
Why don’t you think Little Brother is just 
a white boy? He plays, he runs after a 


JIM GOES HUNTING 


175 


squirrel, maybe he finds a nest and climbs up 
a tree. He forgets time, and plays and 
hunts some more.” 

But when a third hour passed and Jim had 
not returned, even Ganadoga took the case 
a little more seriously, although he still main¬ 
tained that white boys were all big little fools 
sometimes, and that they could not read time 
by the sun when their minds got set on fish¬ 
ing or playing. 

“We must fire a gun to call him,” urged 
Jonas. “ lie is surely lost, or something 
has happened to him.” 

“ No, brother,” the Oneida protested. 
“We fire no gun. We go down the slopes 
and give the pewee call. He will answer, if 
he is lost. He has forgotten time as all white 
boys do when they play a game. Little 
Brother is now playing big Indian hunter.” 

The two lads started down the slope, where 
Jim had disappeared about three hours ago. 

They had not gone far, when Jim replied 
to their call, and then they saw him coming 
toward them. He had killed no game; but 
in his right hand he carried a stick, with the 
aid of which he limped awkwardly along, 


176 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

trying to use his left foot as little as possi¬ 
ble. 

“ Oh, Jonas! ” he called as soon as he saw 
his friends. “ I found a horse. Honest, I 
did, Jonas! A real horse with a little bell 
on him. I tried to catch him, but I fell over 
some roots and wrenched my ankle, so I had 
to let him go. My ankle is pretty sore. I 
guess I’ll sit down a bit.” 


CHAPTER XIX 


BAD MEDICINE CAMP 

“ This is a bad-medicine trip,” said Gana- 
doga, when he and Jonas had taken Jim to 
camp. “ It rains very much, and we have 
much trouble with hostile Indians, even be¬ 
fore we reach the Indian country. Now, 
Little Brother hurts himself so we shall not 
be able to travel to-morrow.” 

Jonas gave Jim’s ankle a good massage, 
although he had never heard that word. He 
bandaged it with some rags that he had satu¬ 
rated with a little suet cut from the beef 
he had brought from Fort Herkimer and 
over these he tied some old linen bandages, 
which his mother had made him take along 
to use in just such emergencies. 

Then he turned his attention to his Indian 
friend. “ Doga,” he began to reprove him, 
44 you are forgetting that you are a Christian, 
when you talk of a bad-medicine trip, just 
like a heathen Indian. 

“You are feeling blue, because we have 

177 


178 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

had a little trouble, and you talk of me and 
Jim going home. We are not going home. 
Don’t you know that we white men fight a 
thing through, after we once begin it. Jim 
and I are going with you, until we learn 
what has become of Nathan. We have 
written to our parents from Albany and 
Fort Herkimer and now you want us to go 
home to tell them the same thing again. 
Come along and help me catch the horse and 
forget about your bad medicine.” 

“ My father believes in bad medicine, and 
so do the white men,” replied the Oneida a 
little bit nettled, “ only you call it bad luck. 
The white scouts I have met say that thirteen 
is bad luck and that Friday is bad luck.” 

“Yes,” admitted Jonas, “a good many 
white men believe a lot of rubbish.” 

“ My spirit tells me,” insisted Ganadoga, 
“ that there is much bad luck coming to us, 
and that you and Little Brother should go 
home.” 

“ Little Brother and I are not going 
home,” Jonas repeated. “ If any more bad 
luck is coming to us we shall go through with 
it, till we strike some good luck. I think we 


BAD MEDICINE CAMP 


179 


have had much good luck. The English 
hair buyer at Detroit has not got our scalps 
yet; we have not been sick and none of us has 
broken a leg. Now come and help me catch 
the horse, and to-morrow we shall put Jim 
and our packs on the horse and start for 
Lake Oneida.” 

The two scouts soon found the horse and 
brought him to camp. Jonas took off the 
bell, muffled the clapper with a rag and 
placed the bell in his pack. 

Toward evening of the next day they 
reached the southeast corner of Lake Oneida. 

They had crossed the Mohawk and passed 
south of the ruins of Fort Stanwix; because 
they feared that some hostile Indians might 
be lurking in the neighborhood of the old 
fort. 

It was their plan to make or find an elm- 
bark canoe and go, mostly by night, down 
Lake Oneida and the Oswego River to Lake 
Ontario. The bark canoe they could port¬ 
age past any rapids, and Fort Oswego they 
expected to pass at night or carry the canoe 
around by land. If they once reached Lake 
Ontario, Ganadoga had planned, they could 


180 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

watch wind and weather, and with a little 
good luck they should reach Fort Niagara 
at the western end of the lake without being 
captured by hostile Indians. 

They realized that at Fort Niagara they 
would practically have to place themselves 
as prisoners in the hands of the British com¬ 
mander. But he was known to be humane 
and kind-hearted, and they were willing to 
appeal to his generosity. 

“We have not spilled the blood of any 
Iroquois or Englishman,” said Jonas, “ and 
we must take a chance.” 

They had considered several other plans, 
but had decided that this would be the best 
and the safest. It was now their second day 
in camp on Lake Oneida. Ganadoga had 
gone off in search of a suitable tree for a bark 
canoe. He had said that he might be gone 
some time, because good bark trees were 
scarce in this part of the forest. 

The travellers had seen no signs of Indians 
or British since they had left Fort Herkimer. 
Before they had made their camp near 
Oneida Lake, but not within sight of it, 
Ganadoga had climbed a tree to look for 


BAD MEDICINE CAMP 181 

signs of camps, but no trace of smoke was 
visible. 

Jonas and Jim had both lain down, and 
had fallen asleep after their noon meal. 
They became conscious of loud voices around 
them, and kicks from moccasined feet com¬ 
pletely awakened them. They sprang up 
and saw themselves surrounded by five 
hideously painted Indians, who told them in 
broken English to come along and “ Make 
no holler, or we kill you! ” 

Jim’s foot was still bandaged but the boy 
remembered that Indian raiders were not in 
the habit of showing mercy to prisoners who 
delayed them on the march. 

After they had marched about a mile from 
camp, Jim was surprised to find that the 
Indians had caught and tied to a tree the 
horse, which he had ridden from the last 
camp. 

One of the Indians mounted the horse and 
told Jim to get up behind. The others tied 
the hands of Jonas behind his back and told 
him to march. 

The Indians all had guns, and they had 
also taken the guns of the white lads. 


182 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

Ganadoga had always insisted that the 
pack of each one should be ready to be picked 
up any moment. That precaution did not 
work out in this instance as the cautious scout 
had intended. The Indians picked up all 
three packs and took them along and tied 
them on the back of the horse, making the 
animal look more like a pack-mule than like 
a war-horse. 

The lads could tell from the position of the 
sun that their captors marched straight west. 
They travelled as fast as they could make the 
horse walk until some time after sunset. 

Then Jim had his desire of seeing an 
Iroquois bark house satisfied, for the whole 
party stopped at a deserted Indian bark 
cabin. 

Before they lay down to sleep they opened 
the captured packs and joking and laughing 
they ate up all the food they found, with the 
exception of a small bag of samp, or hominy; 
but they also gave their prisoners some food 
and allowed them to drink from the spring 
near the cabin. 

When they were ready to lie down for the 
night, they tied the hands and feet of Jonas 


BAD MEDICINE CAMP 183 

and made him lie down in the rear of the 
cabin farthest from the entrance. Jim was 
allowed to spread his blanket between two 
of the raiders. They did not tie him, but 
passed a thong of buckskin around his body 
and placed each of the ends under the 
blanket of an Indian. 

The captured horse they had tied to a tree 
with a long rope so he could graze and 
browse on the bushes, and Jim was pleased 
to see that they let him drink at the spring 
before they tied him up. 

Jim thought the Iroquois were very care¬ 
less with their prisoners and at once made a 
plan to escape. Unfortunately the Indians 
had taken away his hunting-knife, but he de¬ 
cided to keep awake until they were all sound 
asleep. Then he would quietly get up and 
untie Jonas. He did not hope to be able to 
find the way back to Lake Oneida in the 
dark, but he was well acquainted with the 
habits and homing sense of horses. He and 
Jonas would quickly mount the horse and 
turn him lose on the back trail to Lake 
Oneida. He felt sure that they would meet 
Ganadoga somewhere on the trail or they 


1 


184 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

would find him at their last camp. Perhaps 
Ganadoga had already found a canoe and 
they would give these foolish Iroquois the 
slip by paddling quickly down the lake. 

Little Brother did not know that many a 
white boy captured by the Indians had made 
similar plans and had failed to carry them 
out for the same reason that Jim failed; for 
Jim was the first one to fall asleep and the 
last to wake up in the morning. 

“ Oh, Jonas,” he whispered when they 
were ready to start again, “ I fell asleep.” 
But one of the warriors threatened Jim with 
his hatchet and said, “No talk! No talk! 
Me kill you! ” 

These words made Jim understand that it 
would not be so easy to escape as he had 
thought. 

Without eating breakfast, the Indians 
marched rapidly all day, Jim and one Indian 
riding the horse. About noon Jim began to 
feel very hungry, but the Indians stopped 
only a few minutes at a small stream to let 
the horse drink and to take a drink them¬ 
selves and allow their prisoners to drink. 
Then the leader gave each one, including 


BAD MEDICINE CAMP 


185 


the white lads, a handful of dry samp, and 
the whole party resumed their westward 
march. 

When the horse began to show signs of 
being tired out, an Indian walked behind 
him and urged him on with a hickory switch. 
Jim felt very angry at this, but he was afraid 
to say anything. 

Late in the afternoon, they came to a 
large river, which Jim and Jonas learned 
later was the Genesee. 

Jim and the Indian now dismounted and 
the packs were taken off the horse. A tall 
Indian took Jim on his back and carried him 
across, and the water almost reached up to 
the tall man’s armpits. Jonas and the 
other Indians also waded the stream, except 
the one who had ridden the horse. He tried 
to lead the horse across, but the approach 
to the ford was muddy, and the animal re¬ 
fused to come. 

When the Indian saw that he could not 
lead the horse across, he cut himself a switch 
and tried to drive him, but the wise old 
animal only snorted, turned quickly in his 
tracks and disappeared in the brush, sud- 


186 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

denly acting as lively as if he had been stand¬ 
ing in the barn all day. 

Jim thought of the white teamsters at 
Newburgh, who would have indulged in some 
loud swearing on an occasion of this kind, 
but the Indians only laughed aloud and 
seemed to think that the horse had played a 
good joke on their companion. 

After some time spent in searching the 
woods, the unlucky rider returned without 
his horse. He was a short man, and when 
he waded the river, the water came up to 
his neck and he had to hold up his long heavy 
gun with both hands. The other Indians 
again laughed and shouted at him, and both 
white lads for a moment forgot their 
captivity and laughed at the predicament of 
the wader. But when the man slipped and 
ducked under, gun and all, his four com¬ 
panions fairly roared with laughter, and 
when he finally came ashore they laughed 
still more and made fun of him, just as white 
men and boys do at the mishaps of their 
companions. 

Jonas and Jim almost felt friendly toward 
the four men, whose sympathies, like their 


BAD MEDICINE CAMP 187 

own, seemed to be entirely with the escaped 
horse. 

The raiders appeared now no longer 
afraid of being pursued, for they built a fire 
and boiled the samp in Ganadoga’s kettle. 
When it was done all helped themselves, 
using their hands in place of spoons. 

The portion for the captives was placed 
on a piece of bark, and although it was not 
half enough to satisfy their hunger, the lads 
noticed that the food was evenly divided. 

When the Indians lay down to sleep, they 
secured their prisoners as they had done on 
the previous night. 

Jim again lay down thinking of plans to 
escape. It ought to be easier to release 
Jonas, because they all slept in the open. 
The deep river presented, however, a new 
difficulty, but Jonas could carry him across, 
or he could swim across, even if he would 
get his clothes wet. Another difficulty was 
that the horse was lost. 

But the Indians had travelled on a plain 
trail all day, and Jim and Jonas could easily 
follow that trail even in the dark. More¬ 
over, Ganadoga would probably come to 


188 


THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 


their camp before morning. He had said 
that he would surely find them, if Jonas and 
Jim were ever captured by the Iroquois. 

That was as far as tired little Jim got 
with his plans for escape. Ganadoga did 
not come, and Jim did not wake up until he 
felt a moccasined foot poke him in the ribs. 


CHAPTER XX 


A FATEFUL DAY 

The party now went leisurely northward 
down the west bank of the Genesee, and the 
captives gathered from the way the Indians 
travelled and talked that they were ap¬ 
proaching a camp. Jonas had learned 
enough of the Mohawk and the Oneida dia¬ 
lects to know that their captors were Mo¬ 
hawks, the worst enemies of the Americans. 

He was careful not to let them know 
that he understood any of their talk. 
Although they had behaved very well on 
the river and had treated their captives as 
well as could be expected, the white lad felt 
that these men, no matter how they might 
once have been influenced by the missionaries 
and their white neighbors, had again relapsed 
into being cruel and callous savage warriors 
during the bitter frontier warfare that had 
devastated alike the frontier settlements of 
the whites and the villages and cornfields of 
the Indians. 


189 


190 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

He determined in his mind that he would 
rather provoke them into killing' both Jim 
and himself than allow them to practise their 
unspeakable cruelties on Jim. 

Among themselves these warriors of the 
Stone Age Avere kindly and good-natured, 
but on their enemy captives they often 
practised the most brutal outrages, torturing 
and burning them to death. 

Jonas was glad that Jim acted as cheerful 
and lively as if he were amongst the boys 
at Newburgh. As for himself, he kept up 
a cheerful appearance and did everything he 
could to please his captors, but in his heart 
he was grimly determined to sell his life as 
dearly as possible rather than submit to their 
savage tortures. 

He felt himself more than the equal of 
any Indian he had ever seen. He knew how 
to use his fists, and there were few white 
men of his weight that could put his 
shoulders on the ground in a wrestling 
match. If he once got his hands free and 
could snatch a knife or hatchet, it would take 
more than one Indian to dispose of him, and 
he knew that these red savages instinctively 


A FATEFUL DAY 


191 


admired a good fighter. His muscles were 
hardened by constant outdoor work and by 
frequent drills with the militia. When 
Nathan was still at home the two brothers 
had fought many a mock battle with muffled 
hatchets and hunting-knives. That was at 
a time when the stories of Simon Kenton and 
Lewis Wetzel inspired their boyish fancies. 

There was another fact that made Jonas 
think that they were near the end of their 
journey. Their captors had not a mouthful 
of food, but they made no effort to hunt, 
although they had not eaten a full meal for 
nearly two days. 

Jonas naturally also thought often of 
Ganadoga. He felt quite sure that his 
Oneida friend was not far away and that he 
had probably been watching the Mohawk 
camp every night, but he was not going to 
rely too much on help from him. Involun¬ 
tarily he thought of the old saying that God 
helps those who help themselves. 

It was nearly noon, when the party halted 
and sat down for a council. The five Mo¬ 
hawks painted their faces, each one after a 
fancy of his own, but the face of Jonas they 


192 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

painted black, while they left Jim’s face un- 
painted. Under the black smear of pow¬ 
dered charcoal and grease the blood rose hot 
into Jonas Stillwell’s cheek, for he knew 
what was generally in store for prisoners 
whom their Indian captors had painted 
black. 

When the Mohawks had finished their 
painting, one of them ran ahead, and the 
other four fired their guns. Very soon gun¬ 
shots were heard ahead as if in reply to a 
salute or signal, and both white lads knew 
that an Indian camp or village was not more 
than a mile away, and that they would now 
have to pass through the ordeal of being led 
as captives into the camp of hostile, savage 
Indians, who considered all prisoners as the 
absolute property of the victors, with whom 
they might do as they pleased. 

What the captives saw, when they reached 
the clearing around the Indian camp, was 
enough to make seasoned soldiers wince. 
There were about sixty men, women, and 
children all told. The whole wildly excited 
mob was provided with sticks, clubs, and 
switches, and some even with hatchets and 



But the face of Jonas they painted black.— Page 191. 













































































A FATEFUL DAY 


193 


knives. The shouting and yelling of the 
Indians and the barking of their numerous 
curs made the white lads feel as if a crowd 
of imps and demons had come to earth. 

Young men and old women fell with sticks 
and clubs upon Jonas, who parried the blows 
as well as he could, while a crowd of boys 
vented their spite on Jim. 

Jim’s blood boiled at the insult, but he 
followed the example of his older friend and 
took the abuse as a form of brutal hazing, 
which both he and Jonas had expected. But 
when a vicious-looking lad, a good deal 
bigger than the white boy, tried to spit in his 
face, Jim’s anger flared up. He sprang at 
his assailant, and to the noisy merriment of 
the whole crowd, kicked him over into a 
puddle of mud. 

The fellow arose and came at Jim with a 
club; but before he could reach Jim, a 
middle-aged woman rushed out of the crowd, 
scattered the young tormentors, took Jim by 
the arm and led him away to her bark house 
on the edge of the woods. 

But for Jonas there was something worse 
in store. The crowd now formed itself in 


194 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

two lines. Jonas was stripped to the waist, 
and he knew that he was to run the gauntlet. 
One of his captors pointed to a cabin about 
a hundred yards beyond the two lines of his 
tormentors and said: “ You run him to 
house!” 

Jonas had enough presence of mind to 
decide that he would pay no attention to 
those Indians provided with sticks and 
switches, but would keep his eyes on those 
that had knives and hatchets. 

When the chief of the camp called: 
“Run!” Jonas sprang away so quick that 
those at the beginning of the lines hardly 
touched him at all, but at the end of the 
right-hand line stood a big fellow with a 
hatchet, who aimed a blow squarely at the 
white man’s head. When Jonas reached this 
murderous-looking villain, he did not at¬ 
tempt to dodge to the left, but he ran close 
to him, stuck out his right elbow and 
shielded his head with his left arm. Down 
came the big Indian with a thud, hitting his 
head hard on the ground with his feet stick¬ 
ing up in the air. There was confusion and 
a roar of laughter. But Jonas never slack- 


A FATEFUL DAY 


195 


ened his speed to look at the result of his 
stratagem, and before the crowd got ready 
to pursue him, he was safe in the bark cabin, 
where he sat down on the floor. 

He knew that for the present his life 
would be spared, but he wondered if he had 
seriously hurt the man with the hatchet and 
had thus aroused the anger of the man and 
his friends. The fact was that Jonas had 
nerved himself for this ordeal ever since he 
and Jim had been captured; for stories of 
Indian captivity, of captives running the 
gauntlet, and of men being burnt and tor¬ 
tured to death, were the most common fire¬ 
side tales on the frontier during the hard 
and troublesome times of the French and 
Indian War and the Revolutionary War. 

Many cases of whites living as captives 
among the Indians occurred during colonial 
times, and they continued to occur until and 
through the great Sioux outbreak in Min¬ 
nesota in 1862 at the time of the Civil War. 

Not until Custer and Miles and other re¬ 
cent Indian fighters broke the power of the 
plains tribes, and until the disappearance of 
the buffalo starved the proud red warriors 


196 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

into submission, did this epic period of 
American history come to a close. 

Some of the last survivors of these 
strange adventures are still living among us. 
Within a few more years the last of them 
will have passed away; but their strange 
adventures, their heroic deeds and stoic suf¬ 
fering will live forever in history and ro¬ 
mance. 

And what wonderful tales these men and 
women have lived! More strange, more 
weird, more uninventable than the Arabian 
Nights and the wanderings of Ulysses. 

Hundreds of these true hero tales have 
come down in print to our own day. Many 
more have never been recorded or have been 
lost and forgotten. They take us back into 
a long past and forgotten period of our own 
race, when our own ancestors were men of 
the Stone Age, and lived like the red hunters 
of the forest, who are only now forgetting 
to make arrows and knives, axes and ham¬ 
mers out of stone. 

Many of our popular heroes, such as Dan¬ 
iel Boone, Simon Iventon, Jim Bridger, Kit 
Carson, David Crockett, General Custer, 


A FATEFUL DAY 197 

and Buffalo Bill lived at some time as 
captives amongst the Indians, or fought 
against the bravery and cunning of the red 
warriors. 

Such stories as the Captivity of Mary 
Jemison, the Journal of Alexander Henry, 
the Captivity of John Tanner, and many 
others are true rough epics of the Stone Age, 
and they may yet become household classics, 
when we have learned to appreciate the ro¬ 
mance of our own history; which is the epic 
of a continent, a gigantic adventure story the 
like of which never happened before and 
never can happen again. 

It was some little time before Jonas real¬ 
ized that he had not run unharmed through 
the lines of savages. The big man’s hatchet 
had cut a gash in his left arm, a fiendish 
squaw had run her knife into his left shoul¬ 
der, and there were painful welts and bruises 
on his back. However, Jonas did not mind 
these injuries any more than a football player 
minds the bruises received in doing his best 
for his team. 

After a while a woman entered the house. 
When she saw the wounds of Jonas, she tied 


198 


THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 


a bandage around his arm and put some 
crushed roots and herbs on his shoulder, 
which quickly stopped the bleeding. She 
also washed the black paint off his face, gave 
him some venison and corn cakes and mo¬ 
tioned him to eat, and pointed to a bark 
water bucket in the corner. 

A little later she came again with the 
young man’s pack and by signs made him 
understand that he should unroll his blankets 
and lie down on the mat in a corner of the 


room. 


CHAPTER XXI 


WITH THE MOHAWKS 

If the Mohawk woman had remained to 
see Jonas eat, she would have been well 
pleased with his appreciation of her hos¬ 
pitality. He had not eaten a full meal for 
two days and it was easy for him to observe 
the rule of Indian etiquette of eating all that 
was set before him. Having also quenched 
a burning thirst, he unrolled his blankets. 

Toward the woman who had befriended 
him in his loneliness and distress he felt 
deeply grateful. She had not the face or 
figure of a ministering angel, she looked as 
homely and sad as only an old or middle- 
aged Indian woman can look; and Jonas felt 
that Indians are no more all alike than white 
people. How different this squaw appeared 
from the cruel hag that had caused his pain¬ 
ful shoulder wound! 

The young men in those days had little 

time to indulge in sentiment, but Jonas’ 

mind flew to Newburgh to the time when his 

199 


200 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

mother shook up the straw and spread the 
blankets for him and Nathan. 

A strange feeling of being tired and sleepy 
came over him. He felt as he did when he 
came home from some hard service with the 
militia. He thought of Ganadoga. Per¬ 
haps, if he had not insisted that they should 
take the horse along, the Mohawks might not 
have been able to track them. But Gana¬ 
doga had his gun and hunting bow, and he 
was as much at home in the forest as the 
deer. In due time he would appear. 

He had not seen Jim since the woman took 
him away, but he knew enough of Indian 
ways to feel sure that Jim had not been 
harmed. Little Jim was just the kind of 
prisoner every bereft Indian mother could 
not help loving. 

What a delightful feeling it was not to be 
tied up. Why didn’t they tie him up or set 
a watch over him? 

Yes, that was it. Thev knew that he could 
not leave the bark house without being seen, 
and that he would not try to escape without 
his little brother; and then the young man 
fell asleep. 


WITH THE MOHAWKS 


201 


It was dark when he awoke, and he had 
no way of judging what time it was; but 
the weird sound of an Indian drum rang 
through the night with its monotonous beat 
of “ tom'-tom, tom'-tom, tom'-tom,” in a 
one'-two, one'-two, one'-two time. 

Jonas was alone in the cabin. He arose 
and walked to the open door. There was a 
fire in the distance, and the lad could just 
distinguish dark figures moving around the 
fire and the drummers. The Indians were 
having a dance. Perhaps it was a scalp 
dance around some bloody trophies, which 
the five raiders had secured before they made 
him and Jim captives. 

“ To-morrow night,” Jonas thought, 
“ they may want to give my hair a place on 
their dance program. Well, there will be 
some disabled Indians before they put my 
hair on a pole. No Indian will bind my 
hands again, unless he first knocks me down 
or kills me.” 

But as he listened, Jonas fell under the 
spell of that strange primitive music of the 
Stone Age, as does almost everybody who 
listens to the wild tom'-tom, tom'-tom, tom'- 


202 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

tom, tom'-tom, to which primitive men 
danced, and our Indians dance to this day, 
with even more abandon than we do the allur¬ 
ing waltzes of Strauss. 

Jonas was strangely tempted to walk over 
and take his place in the circle of dancers. 
But he remembered Ganadoga’s warning 
that Indians are sticklers on etiquette and 
i^esent any forwardness on the part of 
strangers, so he lay down on the mat and 
rolled himself up in his blanket. But for 
some time sleep would not come. Why did 
Ganadoga not appear? It would be easy 
for him to enter the cabin in the darkness. 

If Jonas had known where to find Jim and 
Ganadoga, he would have been ready to at¬ 
tempt his escape instantly. He did not 
suspect that the bark cabin was being closely 
watched. 

It was fortunate for the white lads that 
Ganadoga knew that recently taken prison¬ 
ers were always closely guarded, although 
the prisoners themselves might not be aware 
of the fact. 

After some time the lad fell asleep again, 
and when he awoke a second time the sun 


WITH THE MOHAWKS 


203 


was shining through the chinks in the bark 
wall. Tie was alone in the cabin and the 
whole village was still sound asleep. 

Jonas could not help thinking what a 
strange childlike kind of life these Indians 
were leading. Here they were in the midst 
of a great war. Their towns and fields had 
been destroyed, the once powerful tribes 
were now roamers and almost beggars on the 
face of the earth, but when a small war party 
came into the camp bringing in a scalp or 
two or a few prisoners, the whole camp 
danced and feasted all night. 

Jonas felt much tempted to go outside to 
get some idea of the lay of the land. He 
remembered that there had been Indian 
towns, or “ castles,” as they were sometimes 
called, in the Genesee Valley for a long 
time. Little Beard’s Town used to be on 
this river. Perhaps this camp was located 
on the site of one of the old towns. 

But he decided to stay in the house. He 
had an uncanny feeling that the house was 
being watched. He lay down again and 
tried to sleep, but he had now had enough 
sleep, so he could do nothing but lie awake 


204 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

and think of various possibilities, most of 
them evil, which the day might hold for him. 

After he had been lying awake a long 
time he heard footsteps, and he hoped it 
might be the woman who had dressed his 
wounds and brought him food, but two 
young men appeared at the door and 
motioned him to come out. 

He stepped out promptly and at a glance 
took in the whole situation. A little dis¬ 
tance from the cabin the old men of the camp 
were assembled in council, and the young 
men had been sent to bring him bound before 
the council, as a man accused of crime may 
be brought before a judge or jury. 

Jonas tried to make the young men under¬ 
stand that he was quite willing to come 
along, and that they did not need to tie his 
hands. But the young men talked in Mo¬ 
hawk, shook their heads and reached out for 
his arms. Then Jonas knew that a critical 
moment had come. He wrenched himself 
free, backed up against the wall of the cabin 
and called out in English, “ Keep off! 
Keep off! I will come! ” 

But now one of the young Indians raised 


WITH THE MOHAWKS 205 

his hatchet and came at Jonas. There was 
no longer any time for talking. The Mo¬ 
hawk might have been a good hunter, but he 
had never heard of the art of boxing, and be¬ 
fore his vicious-looking hatchet could touch 
Jonas, a hard hit on the jaw felled him help¬ 
less to the ground. 

To his own surprise, Jonas remained quite 
cool in this fight. He had gone over scenes 
like this many times, and felt as if he was 
carrying out a well-drilled plan. 

“ If I am to die,” he thought as he looked 
for a moment at the limp form of the Mo¬ 
hawk, c ‘ I might as well die now and die 
fighting. If I let them tie me up, I am at 
the mercy of every red fiend.” 


CHAPTER XXII 


JONAS BEFORE THE COUNCIL 

Here was an unusual spectacle, a prisoner 
showing fight. It did occasionally happen, 
but it was a very rare thing. Generally, by 
the time a captive reached the camp or vil¬ 
lage of his captors, he was so worn out by 
hunger, fatigue, and worry that there was no 
fight left in him. 

No sooner had the report that the prisoner 
refused to be bound and had knocked one 
Indian down with his fist reached the 
council place and some near-by cabins, than 
a group of young men, some of whom were 
armed, ran to the spot of excitement. 

Jonas, by this time, had backed into the 
entrance of his cabin, where he now stood 
repeating the words: “ I will come, but you 
will not bind me! ” 

A tall, dignified man, a young war chief, 

now pressed through the crowd. “ Go, 

206 


BEFORE THE COUNCIL 207 

brothers,” he said to them in Mohawk. “ I 
shall bring the white lad.” 

Then he took hold of Jonas’ left hand. 
“Come!” he said in English, “no tie 
hands! ” 

By this time an angry and excited crowd 
began to collect and the young chief called 
on a number of young warriors to surround 
him and his prisoner to protect the prisoner 
from the mob, for an Indian mob is as un¬ 
reasonable as a mob of white people. 

When he backed into the cabin, Jonas had 
made up his mind that his last day had come. 
A crowd was gathering, and some of the 
young bucks were fingering their guns. 
However, they hesitated to fire at him be¬ 
cause he was now in the house that had been 
shown him as a refuge. 

From this critical position the young war 
chief extricated him just in time, and led 
him before the council, where the warrior sat 
down with him outside the circle of the older 
men. 

When the crowd had quieted down, a man 
arose and spoke to the council. Jonas 
understood that his fate was the subject of 


208 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

the speaker’s address, and that the speaker 
advocated that the white man should die, be¬ 
cause he had made war on the Mohawks. 

Jonas caught the general drift of the talk, 
but he did not think that the speaker had 
found much support for his opinion. But 
as this was the first time he had ever attended 
an Indian council, he was not at all sure that 
his impression was correct. 

It so happened that the young man whom 
Jonas had knocked down was of that fresh 
and forward type of which a few are also 
found in almost every white community. 
The young man had caused the older leaders 
a good deal of trouble, and they were glad 
that he had been punished for rushing with a 
hatchet at an unarmed man, who had made 
no attempt to harm him or to escape. 

The best men and women amongst the 
Indians did at this time no longer approve 
of the abuse and torture of prisoners, but, as 
is often the case in white communities, their 
number was too small to stop the outrages 
which they deplored. 

When the first speaker had finished, the 
young war chief arose. He was serious and 


BEFORE THE COUNCIL 


209 


modest in his attitude to the older men, who 
constituted the council; and Jonas could fol¬ 
low him fairly well. 

“ My fathers,” he said, “ I am only a 
young man and have not done great deeds; 
and I do not understand many of the ques¬ 
tions that have come up in this war. 

“ My brother has told you that this white 
man should die, because he has waged war on 
the Mohawks. My brother is mistaken. 
This white man is a friend of all the Iroquois. 
When I and my brother, the Little Panther, 
went on the warpath to the Susquehanna and 
the Mohawk, this white man and his friends 
could have killed us, but we slept in his 
house, and he and his friends gave us food. 

“ My fathers! This white man should not 
die by our hands. The Mohawks have never 
been ungrateful dogs. Our young warriors 
have brought the white man in as a prisoner. 
That was the will of the Great Spirit. The 
white man should now live with us and be¬ 
long to our sachem, until such time when a 
Mohawk wishes to make him his son. I have 
spoken.” 

There were numerous expressions of as- 


210 


THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 


sent, and it was decided that Jonas was to 
remain in the village and belong to the 
sachem or chief. 

The council broke up and the young chief 
went back with Jonas to the latter’s cabin. 

By this time Jonas knew that the man 
who had saved him from the mob and had 
made a talk in his favor was Tanuhoga, one 
of the men whom Ganadoga’s party had 
captured at the crossing of the small creek, 
and Jonas felt quite ashamed at the sugges¬ 
tions he had made to Ganadoga at that time. 

In a little while, Jonas’s Indian mother, as 
he had begun to call her in his mind, came 
with a large wooden bowl filled with venison 
and boiled hominy. 

Jonas was delighted at seeing the food, 
and he was very much pleased to see that the 
woman had also brought two wooden spoons, 
for he disliked very much to use his fingers 
instead of a fork or spoon. It seemed that 
Tanuhoga was as hungry and thirsty as 
Jonas, for venison, hominy, and broth soon 
disappeared. 

Before the woman went away, she said 
something to Tanuhoga, and Jonas thought 


BEFORE THE COUNCIL 


211 


it had some reference to himself; but he 
could not make out what she said. 

The learner of a new language always 
finds that he can understand some persons 
much better than others. 

After they had eaten, Tanuhoga and 
Jonas visited as they had done at the deserted 
cabin near Schenectady. The Mohawk told 
Jonas that the woman who had brought them 
food was the wife of the chief to whom 
Jonas had been assigned and that he should 
go and work in the chief’s cornpatch after 
they were through visiting. The chief and 
his wife, Oyaseh, he said were good people, 
and the chief had been against his people 
taking part in the war. 

The most welcome news which Tanuhoga 
brought referred to Jim. The Mohawk felt 
sure that Jim would be adopted by the 
woman who had snatched him away. 

“ She and two other families have each a 
house and a patch of corn a mile down the 
river,” he continued, “ and they often stay 
there several days working in their fields. 
Ganowah, that is the woman’s name, lost her 
husband in the battle of Oriskany near the 


212 


THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 


old Fort Stanwix. She had a boy of about 
the age of your little brother, but he died of 
some sickness twelve moons ago, and I think 
Ganowah will adopt the white boy in his 
place.” 

Jonas asked his visitor for news about 
Ganadoga, and Tanuhoga assured Jonas 
that he had seen the Oneida, but that Gana¬ 
doga had gone back to Fort Herkimer. 


CHAPTER XXIII 


THE INDIAN CORNFIELD 

After Tanuhoga had shown Jonas to the 
cornfield of Chief Nundawahno, the Indian 
took his leave saying that some day he would 
again come to visit him. 

In a way Jonas was happy to work in the 
field. He felt grateful and elated at having 
passed almost unharmed through some 
dangerous events, and he was happy to know 
that Jim was safe and would be well treated. 
Pie wished very much to see Ganadoga, but 
naturally he was not worried about the young 
Oneida’s safety. In a week or two Gana¬ 
doga would find them and then they would 
make new plans. 

“ In the meantime,” Jonas thought to him¬ 
self and laughed aloud at the situation, “ I 
am the hired man of Chief Nundawahno, 
sachem of the Mohawk village, located near 
the site of Little Beard’s Town on the 

Genesee. So let us play the game and show 

213 


214 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

the chief how a white farmer can make the 
corn grow. I’ll just fancy that I am work¬ 
ing the place on shares.” 

And Jonas heartily enjoyed the game of 
playing hired man to a Mohawk sachem. 
He had done plenty of walking since he left 
Newburgh, but the strong muscles of his 
arms and chest were almost aching for want 
of exercise. Now he let himself out with the 
hoe and literally made the dirt and the weeds 

fly. 

The sun was shining, the birds were sing¬ 
ing, and the heart of Jonas was flowing over 
with happiness and gratitude, although he 
was a captive. 

Nundawahno’s cornpatch covered nearly 
two acres, a large patch for an Indian family 
to plant, and still more difficult to care for, 
as all the work had to be done by hand. Be¬ 
fore the war the Indians had just begun to 
use horses and cattle in a small way in their 
farming, but now nearly all their stock was 
destroyed. There were still a few stray 
horses in the country, because both whites 
and Indians abandoned their horses when the 
animals gave out. 


THE INDIAN CORNFIELD 215 


Nundawahno’s cornfield was in bad shape. 
The rains had given the weeds a fine start, 
but the corn looked thin and yellowish, as 
corn does when it is neglected in a wet 
season, before it is big enough to choke the 
weeds. 

When the second evening approached, 
Jonas had been over the whole field once, and 
the plot began to look like a real cornfield 
rather than like an unsightly patch of grass 
and weeds. 

The corn which Jonas had been hoeing was 
one of the varieties known as squaw corn. 
The ears are small and grow within a few 
inches of the ground; and the plant matures 
in a very short season. At the time of our 
story practically all Indian tribes, that lived 
in a country where corn would grow, culti¬ 
vated some variety of this useful plant. 
The Chippewa Indians sometimes raised 
good crops of corn as far north as the islands 
in Lake of the Woods in northwestern Min¬ 
nesota. 

Jonas had thoroughly enjoyed his first few 
days as hired man of Chief NTundawahno. 
The principal hardship of the job was the 


216 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

Indians’ utter lack of system in their house¬ 
hold management. There are no meal¬ 
times in an Indian camp. Everybody eats 
when he is hungry; that is, if there is any¬ 
thing to eat in camp. At such happy times, 
a kettle hangs over the fire in front of every 
lodge. That kettle may contain any kind 
of meat, game, fish, corn, and vegetable that 
happens to be on hand, and everybody goes 
to the fire and helps himself whenever he 
pleases. 

There had always been something in the 
kettle that hung on the tripod in front of 
Nundawahno’s lodge, and Jonas had been 
told to come and help himself, whenever he 
felt hungry. He had done so, but it had 
taken the appetite of a young man, who 
realized that he was living in an Indian 
camp, to enable him to look at the contents 
of the kettle and still feel hungry. The old- 
time Indians were not worried bv a few 
feathers or scales getting into the soup. 
Don’t we all know that birds spend a good 
deal of time keeping their feathers clean? 
And certainly a fish that lives in clean water 
cannot help keeping his scales clean. That 


THE INDIAN COENFIELD 217 


is the Indian’s logic, and who will say that 
it is not good reasoning? 

Ovaseh was one of the neatest and cleanest 
housekeepers in the camp. If Jonas had 
been quartered with one of the other kind, 
he would have wanted to live on green corn¬ 
stalks. 

Nundawahno’s cornfield had never looked 
so well. The leaves and stalks soon turned 
a rich dark green, the long leaves began to 
play in the wind like ribbons; and one could 
notice the growth of the corn from day to 
day. 

After a few days, Nundawahno gave 
Jonas a hunting bow with a few arrows and 
a knife. The lad still spent most of his 
time in the cornfield, where the squash, 
melons, and beans demanded his attention as 
well as the com. Most of the time he was 
alone, but sometimes boys and young men 
came to see the white lad work. 

After Jonas had a bow, he was often able 
to add some small game, squirrels, rabbits, 
woodchuck, and grouse to the family kettle. 
This game he could eat with greater relish, 
because he always dressed and cleaned it be- 


218 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

fore he gave it to Oyaseh. These different 
kinds of game, boiled with beans or hominy, 
were good enough for any camper. 

A week soon passed by in this way, a week 
during which Jonas had been much alone and 
had had much time to think. 

When the corn and the garden truck 
needed no hoeing or weeding, Jonas repaired 
the fence. It looked as if some white man 
had started it as an old-time worm fence of 
split rails, such as are now rarely seen and 
no longer built. They can only be built 
where both wood and labor are cheap. The 
fence had never been finished, but Jonas 
wanted to put it in such shape that the stray 
horses of the camp and of Indian visitors 
could not get into the field. 

It would not turn deer, but they kept 
away from the noisy camps, and of cat¬ 
tle there were none left in the neighbor¬ 
hood. 

For his work on the fence Jonas found an 
old white man’s ax, which looked as if it had 
been used for breaking stones, but by means 
of an old file and pieces of sandstone, Jonas 
made it usable. The little axes of the 


THE INDIAN CORNFIELD 219 

women and the war hatchets of the Indian 
men irritated Jonas, they made him feel as 
if he were playing with toy axes. 

Oyaseh, whom Jonas called Mother, for 
some time very seldom spoke to him, 
although she saw everything he did, and 
often worked in the field with him. Her 
husband, Chief Nundawahno was away most 
of the time, but Jonas could not learn why 
he was away. Jonas suspected that the old 
chief was very fond of making a round of 
visits. 

But one day, when he brought her the first 
mess of green beans, Oyaseh’s heart opened. 
“ You are a good lad,” she said, “ but you 
will not stay with us. Only bad white men 
stay with us.” The words were spoken in 
a low voice, and Jonas never forgot the 
words and the sad face of his Indian mother, 
who had lost, as he learned later, four sons. 
Two had been killed in drunken brawls, and 
two had lost their lives fighting with Chief 
Brant on the side of the English. 

Oyaseh was right. Only bad white men 
staved with the Indians: Rumsellers, all 
kinds of lawless characters, and such black- 


220 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

guards and traitors as Simon Girty, who had 
become more vile and brutal than the worst 
of the savages with whom he lived. 

Since the outbreak of the war, even the 
missionaries, the only men who did not enter 
the Indian country for purely selfish reasons, 
had been compelled to leave. The Iroquois 
had no longer any fixed towns. Small 
bands and groups wandered about the 
country. They built temporary villages and 
raised a little corn during the summer, and 
they moved off to hunt or beg food of the 
British, when their scanty crops had been 
harvested. If indeed the corn was not all 
consumed green, long before it was ripe. 

Nundawahno’s village was such a tempo¬ 
rary camp. Jonas felt as if the whole camp 
might break up any day and come back, 
when the corn was ripe. 

This was the first time that Jonas tried 
to carry on a conversation in Mohawk, for 
during the last few days he had become 
worried again about Jim. 

“ Where is my little brother? ” he asked 
Oyaseh, as she sat down on a stump in the 
field to rest. 


THE INDIAN CORNFIELD 221 


“ He is down river a little way,” Oyaseh 
answered. “ Maybe he will come pretty 
soon, or I shall send for him.” 

Jonas was not quite sure that he had 
understood every word. If Jim was well 
and safe, why was he never allowed to come 
and see his older brother? 

But Jonas felt much encouraged. If he 
did not see Jim within a few days, he would 
again speak to Oyaseh, and ask her to send 
for him. 


CHAPTER XXIV 


JONAS MEETS HIS ENEMY 

A few days later, while Jonas was again 
at work in the cornfield, he heard a lusty 
shout, and there came Jim racing down the 
field as if a whole tribe of Iroquois were after 
him. Jim was barefooted and hatless. He 
wore an Indian hunting shirt and his old 
linsey-woolsey trousers turned up to the 
knees. 

“ Oh, Jonas,” he cried, “ I have had a 
great time with the Indians! The first day, 
Ganowah, that’s my mother now, made me 
stay in the house. She talked to me and 
made signs. I think she meant the boys 
would pick fights with me if I went outside. 
Jonas, I did have another fight with the big 
fellow, who tried to spit on me. But Jonas, 
he doesn’t know the first thing about wres¬ 
tling. Honest, Jonas, I had him down in no 
time, and I was giving it to him good, when 
the whole bunch pitched on to me. But then 

Ganowah came along with a stick, and all 

222 



There came Jim racing down the field as if a whole tribe of 
Iroquois were after him.— Page 221. 












JONAS MEETS HIS ENEMY 223 


the red rascals ran. She got hold of me and 
boxed my ears, just like your mother used 
to do at Newburgh, but it didn’t hurt very 
much. You see, Jonas, I had to fight; be¬ 
cause he started in again to bully me. I 
think he will let me alone now.” 

Jim stayed with Jonas all day and he was 
allowed to sleep with him in the bark house. 
That was a great joy to both; and it seemed 
they would never get through talking over 
things that had happened since they were 
captured and separated. Jonas’s wounds 
were entirely healed by this time, although 
each had left a plain scar. 

“ Honest, Jonas,” Jim declared, after they 
had been talking a long time, “ living with 
the Indians isn’t so bad. That is, if a fellow 
happens to get a good mother. I would 
rather live with the Indians than have the 
mean boys at Newburgh call me 4 Tory ’ 
every time they see me.” 

“ Don’t you begin liking it too well now,” 
replied Jonas. “ We have to find Nathan 
and get back to our own people.” 

“ But you won’t go and leave me? ” 
pleaded Jim. 


224 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

“ No, of course not,” Jonas promised. 
“ I hope nothing has happened to Ganadoga. 
It is strange that he has not looked us up. 
He must know where we are.” 

Jim was allowed to stay with Jonas for a 
week, because during that time Ganowah 
was visiting Oyaseh. 

Of the men in the camp the white lads saw 
very little. Most of the time the warriors 
were away. Sometimes they went off hunt¬ 
ing for several days, at other times they were 
gone a week or two, and Jonas believed that 
they had either gone on some raid or were 
visiting friends and gathering news. While 
they were in camp, they spent most of their 
time sleeping and sitting around. Only the 
old men and the boys considered too young 
to endure the hardships of long journeys re¬ 
mained in camp. 

About another point Jonas was very much 
in doubt. Were the Indians watching him 
or not? Sometimes he felt quite sure that 
nobody was watching him, and that he could 
have travelled many miles before his escape 
would have been discovered. Then again he 
was startled by coming unexpectedly upon 


JONAS MEETS HIS ENEMY 225 


men or boys or even women, who he felt sure 
had been watching him for hours, before he 
discovered their presence. This happened 
several times during the week Jim was stay¬ 
ing with him. It marred to some extent the 
pleasure of Jim’s visit. Although the two 
were allowed to come and go as they pleased, 
they were not allowed the use of a gun, but 
hunting bows, knives, and hatchets they 
could use as they pleased. 

When there was no work in the cornfield, 
the two friends roamed the woods in search 
of small game. Some of this game they 
cooked and ate by themselves as if they had 
been on a day’s hunting trip in the woods 
near Newburgh; but they never failed to 
bring in a part of their bag to Oyaseh, whose 
sad features always lit up with a smile when 
the two white sons brought in game all 
dressed and cleaned and ready for the kettle 
that always hung on the tripod in front of 
her bark house. 

Both of the lads had now picked up the 
Mohawk words for the most common things 
and activities of an Indian camp, and Oyaseh 
often talked to them, telling them where to go 


226 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

for grouse, raccoons, and other small game. 
The lads were much surprised at her intimate 
knowledge of the country. She knew the 
course of every small creek, the position of 
every prominent rock and of many old and 
bio: trees. She could describe the trails for 
ten miles around the camp so accurately that 
Jonas was never in doubt where to go. 
He often marvelled at this ability of an 
aged Indian, and could not help comparing 
this trait common to most Indians with 
the vague descriptions and directions 
which most white people give to strangers 
when they ask for information about roads 
and places. 

Jonas learned later that Oyaseh was a 
Seneca woman, who had been born on the 
Genesee and had spent her childhood and 
youth near the place where she was now 
living. The Genesee Valley was originally 
a part of the country of the Senecas, who 
were the most westerly tribe of the Iroquois 
League. Some of the trails and places 
which Oyaseh described to the white lads she 
had not seen since the time she was a young 
girl, some fifty years ago, when she went 


JONAS MEETS HIS ENEMY 227 


with her mother after grapes and berries and 
different kinds of roots. 

It was now the time when June-berries 
and strawberries were ripe, and the goose¬ 
berries were good if cooked and mixed with 
some maple sugar, of which, however, 
Oyaseh had but very little left. 

It was on a berrying trip that Jonas again 
had an encounter with the Indian, Gray 
Wolf, whom he had knocked over when he 
was made to run the gauntlet. Jonas had 
seen the man a number of times. The fellow 
always scowled at the white lad, but never 
spoke nor offered any insult. 

On this occasion, the white lads, follow¬ 
ing the trail to a June-berry thicket which 
Oyaseh had described to them, suddenly met 
Gray Wolf in company with another Indian. 
The white lads carried no arms, except their 
hunting-knives. Each of the Indians had 
a hatchet and knife, but no gun. 

Although the white lads stepped out of 
the trail to let the Indians pass, Gray Wolf 
rudely pushed Jim over into the brush and 
punched Jonas in the side with the handle of 
his hatchet. Jonas dropped his bark basket 


228 


THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

and stood ready to defend himself, but Gray 
Wolf grinned at him maliciously and went 
on. 

“ Some day,” Jonas vowed, as he wiped 
the blood off the scratches which Jim had 
received when he tumbled into the brush, “ I 
shall lick that red coward within an inch of 
his life. But, Jim, you keep away from 
him. Don’t ever let him touch you again. 
Make for the brush when you see him com- 

ing.” 

“ Oh, I’ll duck all right, next time I see 
him coming,” Jim promised, “ but I just 
wish I was big enough to fight him.” 

The trip of the two white friends after 
this annoying incident turned out to be one 
of the most enjoyable they had taken since 
their captivity. 

After walking about five miles on a dim 
trail, as Oyaseh had directed them, they came 
to an open spot in the timber, where tall 
bushes of June-berries were loaded with 
ripe black fruit, while here and there patches 
of wild strawberries painted the ground red. 

The lads ate their fill of the delicious wild 
fruit. Then they ate their corn cake which 


JONAS MEETS HIS ENEMY 229 


the Indian women had given them to take 
along, and then they picked some more 
berries for their dessert. No berries raised 
in gardens and sold in stores can ever have 
the flavor of ripe wild berries picked off the 
vines and eaten on the spot. 

“ Jonas, why is it,” asked Jim, “ that eat¬ 
ing lots of wild strawberries, June-berries, 
or blueberries never makes a fellow sick as 
other things do? ” 

“ I suppose,” Jonas answered smiling, 
“ the Great Spirit made these wild fruits for 
the Indians, who had no other fruit. And 
as he made a lot of wild fruit, so he made 
the Indians and the white people, too, so they 
can eat a lot without getting sick.” 

In the afternoon the lads filled their bark 
baskets and started for camp early. They 
had had such a wonderful time and looked 
forward with so much pleasure to the feast 
they could make for their Indian mothers, 
that they had almost forgotten the incident 
with Gray Wolf; when suddenly, about a 
mile from the berrying ground, they saw the 
two Indians stand on the trail as if waiting 
for the white lads. 


230 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

The blood rushed hot to Jonas’ face as he 
saw them. Had these two rogues been 
watching them all day? Apparently they 
were waiting to pick a quarrel with him or 
even to murder him. 

“ Jim,” he warned the young boy, “ you 
keep away from them. Don’t let them come 
near you. Slip off the trail to the right.” 

Jonas was strongly tempted, in order to 
avoid trouble, to do what he told Jim to do. 
But he quickly reasoned that Gray Wolf 
would interpret this as an act of fear, so he 
started to pass the men quietly on his own 
right after he had shifted the berry pail to 
his left hand. 

When Jonas was opposite the two Indians 
Gray Wolf tried to push Jonas off the trail 
and spill his berries. 

This act of malice was too much for Jonas. 
He set down his berries, and before the In¬ 
dian knew how it had happened, he found 
himself doubled up in the brambles of a 
blackberry bush. 

Jonas had expected that he would either 
have to run or defend himself against two 
men, and he felt much relieved when he saw 


JONAS MEETS HIS ENEMY 231 


the second Indian laughing at Gray Wolf in 
the blackberry brambles. 

But Gray Wolf did not take his punish¬ 
ment good-naturedly. As soon as he had 
gotten free of the brambles he came with a 
hatchet for Jonas, who had backed some 
twenty paces up the trail and now stood with 
his back against a big tree. 

“ Y r ou drop that hatchet,” Jonas called, 
raising up his left hand and drawing his 
knife with his right. “ I’ll use the knife if 
you come near me with that hatchet! ” 

If the Indian had not understood the 
words of Jonas, he had understood his ges¬ 
tures. He stopped short, uttering some vile 
epithets in broken English, and the next 
moment he hurled his hatchet at Jonas’ head. 
Jonas barely dodged the missile, which stuck 
fast in the tree, and before the Indian had 
time to make another move Jonas had flung 
the hatchet into the woods as far as he could 
throw it. 

Then Jonas dropped his knife and called, 
“ Come on, Gray Wolf! Drop your knife 
and come on! I’ll give you a fair fight! ” 
But the Indian had apparently no stomach 


232 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

for a fair fight, and was glad to follow his 
companion, who took him by the arm and 
led the way down the trail saying, “ Come 
away! Come away! Chief Nundawahno 
will be angry if you hurt the white boys! ” 

Jonas had been too busy to take note of 
the doings of Jim; now the lad stood beside 
him with a stout hickory club in his hand. 
“ Jonas,” he cried, “ if both of those Indians 
had pitched into you, I should have been 
there mighty quick with this club. Look! 
It is all sound dry hickory. Wouldn’t I 
have liked to lay it on that fellow! He is a 
low-down Indian! ” 

“ About as low-down dirty as some white 
men I know,” Jonas assented. “ Come, 
Jim, help me pick up my berries. I spilled 
some as I set down my pail.” 

“ Perhaps we had better not follow the 
trail going home? ” suggested Jim. “ Gray 
Wolf may wait for us again.” 

“ No, Jim,” said Jonas, “ we shall follow 
the trail. And if he waits for us again, he 
will get his licking to-day.” 


CHAPTER XXV 


THE FIGHT 

Although Jonas did not wish to cut 
through the woods to escape from being an¬ 
noyed by Gray Wolf, the lads sat down for 
half an hour, so as to make sure that they 
would not catch up with him before they 
reached the Indian town. 

“We must go now,” Jim finally urged his 
older friend, “ or it will be dark before we 
get out of the woods. We might lose the 
trail and our mothers would be worried.” 

“ Yes, we must go,” Jonas assented. 
“ Our mothers will begin to worry if we are 
not home by dark. They expected us back 
early.” 

They walked briskly along the dim trail, 
which had not been used for several years. 
Clouds were coming up from the west and 
it began to grow dark under the trees sooner 
than they had expected. 

“ Jonas, I am afraid,” whispered Jim. 

233 


234 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

“ Gray Wolf could shoot at us from the 
woods and we could not defend ourselves.” 

“ I think he is too much of a coward to 
make a planned attack on my life,” replied 
Jonas, “ but we should be on our guard till 
we get out of the timber. Don’t talk any 
more, Jim; listen for sounds in the woods 
and on the trail ahead of us.” 

It was really getting dark now. Some 
flying squirrels glided back and forth across 
the trail, but the lads were not in a mood to 
stop and watch their strange play. Several 
owls began to hoot in the tree-tops. A rab¬ 
bit that had been squatting on the trail 
darted in frantic haste into the brush; and in 
the distance toward June-berry Hill, they 
heard the howling of wolves. 

“ The deer must be coming back into this 
region,” whispered Jonas. “ Those wolves 
are driving a deer. I hope the deer will get 
away; but he will not, unless he reaches the 
Genesee River or a lake, where he can throw 
them off his track.” 

Again they walked on in silence, listening 
to every sound. 

“ Stop! ” whispered Jonas when they had 


THE FIGHT 235 

come within a mile of the clearing. “ Some¬ 
body is coming along the trail. Give me 
your hickory club, Jim. If that is Gray 
Wolf, he will get no chance to use a knife or 
hatchet on me. Step aside and wait.” 

There were two persons coming on the 
trail, and Jonas seized his club with both 
hands ready to strike. 

The figures came nearer in silence. They 

CD 

carried no guns. That was reassuring. And 
then Jonas saw that they were two women. 
He dropped his club and picked up his berry 
basket. 

“ Mother,” he said, and his voice choked a 
little, “it is good of you and Ganowah to 
come after us. We were delayed by a little 
trouble on the trail, but we have brought 
you many sweet berries from the hill.” 

But Jim threw his arms around his Indian 
mother, and then held up his basket to her. 
“ Look, Mother,” he cried, “ the biggest 
berries you ever saw! ” 

“ My son,” said Oyaseh after Jim had 
quieted down, “ you did stay too long, and 
Ganowah and I were worried. We thought 
you had lost the trail or some evil had be- 


23G THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

fallen you; but now we are glad that you 
have come back safe.” 

And then Jim took Ganowah’s hand and 
told all about the trouble they had with Gray 
Wolf; and Jonas made no objection. 

Both of the women listened attentively to 
Jim’s story. 

“It is good, my son,” said Oyaseh, when 
Jim had finished, “ that you told us the truth 
about Gray Wolf. He is a bad man, and 
has a bad influence on our young men. To¬ 
morrow I shall tell Nundawahno that Gray 
Wolf must be sent away to his own village.” 

“ But, Mother, lie will not go,” said Jim. 
“ He likes it in this camp.” 

“ Then some of Nundawahno’s warriors 
will take him away,” Oyaseh insisted. “ He 
shall not stay any longer in our camp.” 

That evening, the two white lads and their 
Indian mothers made a feast at Ovaseh’s 
cabin, where both of the women were stay¬ 
ing. 

The women had baked some corn-meal 
cakes, and the kettle was full of boiled squir¬ 
rel and grouse and hominy. And in order 
to please their white sons the women had 


THE FIGHT 


237 


put a little salt in the soup. For dessert 
they had June-berries and strawberries, with 
maple sugar for those who liked their berries 
sweetened. 

The two women smiled when they saw the 
boys help themselves again and again, but 
they did not insist upon the rule of Indian 
etiquette that everything must be either eaten 
or carried away by the guests. 

Verv soon after the meal the lads hade 
%/ 

good-night to their mothers, because they 
felt very sleepy after the long exciting day. 

“ Jonas, I’m so full, I can hardly wiggle,” 
remarked Jim while they were walking to 
their own cabin. 

Before they lay down to sleep, Jonas 
closed the entrance to the cabin with large 
pieces of bark and poles. 

“ I don’t want to wake up,” he said, “ and 
find that miserable Gray Wolf standing over 
me with a hatchet. A vicious harebrained 
white man is bad enough, but I’m afraid a 
foolish and vicious Indian is even worse. 
Jim, did you smell any rum about that fel¬ 
low? I thought I did. Well, he cannot 
come in now without making enough noise to 


238 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

wake me up. Any fellow that tries to break 
into this cabin will surely get a trouncing 
with the hickory club. I should vary the 
maxim of the Bible and think, ‘ Spare the 
rod and spoil the Indian.’ Of course, Jim, 
you don’t know what that means.” 

“ Yes, I do,” protested Jim. “ It means 
that maybe you will make a good Indian of 
Gray Wolf, if you give him a good licking.” 

“ That is about it,” agreed Jonas with a 
laugh. “ Jimmie, you are wiser than I 
thought you were.” 

The lads were both so tired that they soon 
fell asleep. 

The night passed off quietly, and when 
Jonas awoke, it seemed to him as if yester¬ 
day’s encounter with Gray Wolf were only 
a bad dream. 

However, about a week later something 
much more serious occurred than the incident 
on the trail. 

It was now the first week in Julv, and the 
lads and their Indian mothers looked for¬ 
ward to the time when the corn should be 
far enough advanced to furnish green ears 
for roasting and boiling. 


THE FIGHT 239 

«There was one thing that worried the two 
lads a good deal: They were now entering 
upon their second month of captivity and 
they had not heard a word of Ganadoga; nor 
could they form any plan of sending word 
to him. 

Could it be possible that, in spite of all 
his caution and experience, he had been cap¬ 
tured or killed? If the Oneida did not ap¬ 
pear very soon, Jonas felt that he and Jim 
would have to plan and do something with¬ 
out waiting any longer for their guide. 

The lads had plenty of work, because they 
now also took care of Ganowah’s cornpatch, 
while she stayed permanently with Oyaseh. 
If this work had not kept them in good 
health and caused them to sleep soundly at 
night, they would have been quite unhappy. 
For there was another matter, besides Gana- 
doga’s continued absence, that caused both 
of them a good deal of worry: Gray Wolf 
had not been sent away. On the contrary, 
the lads saw him almost every day. He 
scowled viciously at the white lads, whenever 
he met them; and in the evening, he and a 
few of his friends disturbed the camp by a 


240 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

great deal of boisterous singing and shout¬ 
ing. 

“ Jim,” said Jonas one day, “ I think some 
of these young loafers have gotten hold of 
some British rum. Look out for them. 
Don’t let them lay hands on you.” 

The corn was growing fast and a few days 
later Jonas picked the first roasting ears and 
took them to Oyaseh’s cabin. When he re¬ 
turned to the field, he saw some dark low 
figure among the stalks. His first thought 
was that a bear had discovered that the corn 
was now in season, but on looking more 
closely he discovered that it was an Indian 
in a crouching position who was pointing a 
gun at him. Jonas saw the flash in the pan 
and instantly threw himself down flat behind 
a pile of weeds and rubbish which he had 
carried out of the cornfield. A shot rang 
out, and several slugs whistled over the white 
lad’s head. Jonas did not give the Indian 
time to reload. Before the red villain could 
take the stopper off his powder-horn, Jonas 
was upon him. With a club that he was car¬ 
rying, he knocked the knife out of the man’s 
hand, and then he rushed at him hare-fisted. 


THE FIGHT 


241 


In this kind of a fight the Indian did not last 
long; and Jonas punished him, till he lay 
limp and helpless on the ground. 

Then Jonas walked over to Nundawahno’s 
cabin. 

“ My father,” he said, “ Gray Wolf fired 
a load of slugs at me. I made him fight me 
with his fists, and he is now lying in the corn¬ 
field.” 


CHAPTER XXVI 


MORE ANXIETIES 

The next day Gray Wolf had disappeared 
and the white lads never saw him again, but 
they did not know for a long time what had 
become of him. 

The life of Jonas and Jim now assumed a 
character which neither of them had ever 
expected to meet with as captives amongst 
the Indians. The old chief Nundawahno 
and Oyaseh treated Jonas in every respect 
as if he had been their own son, although they 
had not formally adopted him. Jim, on the 
other hand, had been put through a cere- 
monv, which at the time he did not under- 
stand, but which meant, as he learned later, 
that Ganowah, who was a widow, had for¬ 
mally adopted him as her own son; and as 
such she treated him. 

The young corn, now in the milk, fur¬ 
nished the people of the village with a steady 

supply of food. In addition Jonas and Jim 

242 


MORE ANXIETIES 


243 


supplied their own household constantly 
with several kinds of small game. 

Such a thing as game laws and closed sea¬ 
sons were not known to the Indians, but they 
were not wasteful with game and fish, and 
generally spared animals and birds that were 
taking care of young. 

The first occasion when Jonas was allowed 
the use of a gun came about through a dis¬ 
covery of Jim. 

One evening, at dusk, the lad came run¬ 
ning, all out of breath, to Oyaseh’s cabin. 

“ Jonas! ” he called, “ there’s a bear in the 
cornfield. Sure, Jonas, a real bear! He is 
eating up the ears just like a hog.” 

Jonas instinctively seized the loaded gun 
in the cabin and ran out. A few minutes 
later a shot was heard, and in a very short 
time the news spread to every cabin that the 
white son of Nundawahno and Oyaseh had 
killed a bear. 

It was the first bear killed at this camp, 
and the first head of big game killed by 
Oyaseh’s white son. It was a young animal 
in good condition and, of course, the chief 
invited everybody to a feast that evening. 


244 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

Green corn roasted on the cob, tender and 
fat young bear meat, sassafras tea, sweetened 
with maple sugar, did make a feast, which 
was enjoyed by every one in camp with a 
zest and appetite for which many a dyspeptic 
millionaire would gladly give half of his 
wealth. It was lucky that, as usual, most of 
the warriors and young men were away. If 
they had all been in camp, the bear would not 
have been big enough to give them all a full 
meal, for young and old were hungry for 
some good meat. 

After the feast there was a dance. Three 
men sat in the center and beat a drum in that 
weird, tom'-tom, tom'-tom, tom'-tom meas¬ 
ure; and Jim and Jonas both took part, for 
the first time, in an Indian dance, which 
lasted until after midnight. 

“ Jonas, if we don’t leave this camp pretty 
soon,” said Jim as the white lads walked over 
to their cabins, “ we can never get away 
again. We shall be Indians. I never 
thought Indians would treat their captives 
that way.” 

After this event, the lads were allowed full 
liberty to go and come as they pleased. They 


MORE ANXIETIES 


245 


often hunted deer for miles up or down the 
Genesee River or west of the camp. For 
these hunts they were allowed the use of 
guns, and they soon became the hunters of 
the camp, to whom the women and children 
and old men looked for a supply of meat to 
go with the corn and wild fruit. For the 
time being, there was abundance in the camp. 
Oyaseh and Ganowah looked less sad, and 
chatted and laughed a great deal, and the 
children no longer looked hollow-eyed and 
sickly. 

When the white lads w r ent on a hunt, they 
told their Indian mothers in what direction 
they expected to go. If for any reason they 
came home late, Oyaseh and Ganowah wor¬ 
ried and went out to look for them, but their 
actions showed that they had not feared that 
the lads had run away, but they had feared 
that some accident might have happened to 
them. 

Jonas and Jim were no longer treated as 
captives, and it was evidently the wish of the 
Indians that the two white lads should stay 
with them permanently. Jonas often 
thought of the words of Oyaseh that only 


246 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

bad men stayed with the Indians; but he had 
heard of cases of good men and women who 
had lived for years, if not permanently, 
among the Indians, and had been adopted as 
members of the tribe. 

The white lads, however, were every day 
growing more restless. Chief Nundawahno 
and the other old men knew nothing of 
Nathan, and the warriors had not been in 
camp for a month, and nobody knew where 
they had gone and when they would return. 

The continued absence of Ganadoga had 
become a source of much worry to the lads. 
It was now the month of August, and not a 
word or sign had they heard or seen of him. 

“ Jonas, I think he is dead or a captive 
like ourselves. Or perhaps he does not want 
to find us,” Jim would argue. “ Maybe 
Kalohka surprised him and killed him.” 

“ Something has happened to him,” Jonas 
admitted. “ He would not be a captive for 
two months without having a chance to 
escape. I know that he would not turn 
traitor and just leave us. Some misfortune 
must have happened to him, or we should 
have heard from him.” 


MORE ANXIETIES 247 

Every day the lacls looked and listened for 
a sign or a word from him. 

“ We cannot stay here much longer,” said 
Jonas, “ or winter will be upon us, and our 
parents will begin to worry about us as much 
as they do about Nathan.” 

Both lads felt confident that it would be 
very easy for them to escape, that is to start 
on their flight. If they left on a hunting 
trip early in the morning they could be 
twenty miles or even thirty away in the even¬ 
ing. But where would they go? Could 
they make the seventy miles to Fort Niagara 
without falling into the hands of another 
band of warriors, and being made prisoners 
again? They would have to risk the journey 
by land, for Jonas declared that he could not 
make an elm-bark canoe. “ Ganadoga can 
do it,” he told Jim. “ I could make a scow 
or a raft, but it takes an Indian to make a 
bark canoe. 

“ Well, Jim, we shall wait one more week,” 
Jonas decided. “ Then if we do not hear 
from Ganadoga, we must plan something 
without him, but I declare I do not know 
what we should do.” 


248 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

One afternoon when Jim was at work with 
his hunting-knife on a piece of dry hickory 
trying to make himself a hunting bow, his 
knife slipped, and he cut a bad gash in his 
left wrist. The wound bled profusely and, 
partly from loss of blood and partly from 
fright, Jim fainted away while he was trying 
to stop the bleeding. 

When he came to, he was lying on a mat 
in Ganowah’s cabin and Ganowah was hold¬ 
ing up his hand above his head. 

“ My son,” she said in a low and motherly 
voice, “ you gave me a bad fright. I feared 
that you would die from losing much blood. 
I have put medicine on your wound and tied 
it up, but you must hold your hand up so the 
wound will not begin to bleed again. Now 
keep your hand up, while I go and bring you 
some hot broth from the kettle. Your face 
is still very white, and you must drink some 
hot broth and eat a little meat and corn.” 

In the evening Jim said he was all right 
again and Ganowah put his hand in a sling 
so it rested high against his right shoulder. 

When he and Jonas were on their way to 
their own cabin, Jim broke out crying. 


MORE ANXIETIES 


249 


“ Jonas,” he sobbed, “ I can’t run away from 
Ganowah. You will have to go alone, Jonas. 
I can’t run away any more.” 


CHAPTER XXVII 

jim’s worry 

“ Don’t cry, Jim,” Jonas tried to console 

the boy. “ You should go to sleep now. 

To-morrow we can talk more. We don’t 

have to run away just yet.” 

The lads had long ago lost count of the 

days of the week and of the calendar days of 

the month. They knew from the changes of 

the moon that had occurred since they left 

Newburgh that it was now the month of 

August, but whether it was the middle of 

August or the end of it, they had no means 

of knowing. The Indians agreed that it was 

the month of August, the Month of the 

Ripening of the Corn. 

Almost a week had passed since Jim had 

declared that he could not run awav from 

•/ 

Ganowah. The lads had been chasing the 

gray squirrels out of the cornfield and had 

caught alive a young raccoon that had also 

discovered that some of the corn was now 

250 


JIM’S WORBY 


251 


almost ripe. They had not done any hard 
work during the day. 

“ It feels just like Sunday,” Jim said, as 
he and Jonas were watching the play of the 
sun among the leaves and nodding ears of 
the corn. “Listen, Jonas!” he continued. 
“ Do you hear the crickets and grasshoppers? 
They are chirping just as they used to do in 
our cornfield at Newburgh. It makes me 
think of home.” 

All afternoon the lads sat around and 
talked as they often used to do on Sunday 
afternoons at home on the Hudson. 

Toward evening they went over to the 
cabin of their Indian mothers for a meal of 
freshly roasted corn and boiled venison, 
although they had some corn and venison at 
their own cabin. 

With August begins the season of plenty 
for all wild creatures and, in the old days, 
this was also the season of abundance for the 
Indians. Most of the tormenting flies and 
mosquitoes have disappeared in August. 
The deer are getting fat, the corn is ripening, 
the forest offers many kinds of wild fruit, 
and the little paws and the mouths of the 


252 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

squirrels are tanned brown from sampling 
butternuts and walnuts. 

The lads chatted a while with the old chief 
and the two Mohawk women, then they 
sauntered back to their own cabin, and about 
sunset they rolled up in their blankets. 

They were just about to drop off to sleep, 
when Jim sat up in his blankets. 

“I heard something, Jonas,” he whispered. 
“ Listen, didn’t you hear it? ” 

The call came again, and Jim was going 
to jump up and run outside, but Jonas cau¬ 
tioned him. 

“ Don’t you go out,” he warned. “ It 
may be a ruse on the part of Kalohka or 
some other enemy.” 

But now the call came again, clear and 
unmistakable, “ Peowee', peowee',” and Jim 
answered the call as w^ell as he could. To 
the next call both lads replied, and a minute 
later an Indian peered cautiously into the 
doorway and softly repeated the prearranged 
signal. 

The two lads held back no longer. They 
sprang up and rushed to the doorway. 

“Doga!” cried Jonas under his breath. 


JIM’S WORRY 253 

“Doga, is it really you? We had almost 
given you up as lost and dead.” 

“ My friends,” spoke Ganadoga, “ you 
have had to wait a long time, but I came 
back as soon as I could. 

“ When the Mohawks had captured you, I 

followed them and learned what became of 

you. But I could not show myself at that 

time, and that is the reason you never saw 

me, although I was near your cabin several 

times. But I found Tanuhoga, and he gave 

me his word that no harm should come to 

vou. 

*/ 

“ Then I travelled fast to Fort Herkimer 
to bring back such goods as the Indian 
women like, beads and red cloth. 

“ But when I was there the commander 
sent me to West Point with papers that he 
would give to no one else. I took them and 
expected to make a quick trip. But a great 
sickness fell upon me and I was put in the 
sick-house, the hospital, white people call it, 
with the white soldiers. I was sick a long 
time, and for many days I did not know that 
I was still alive, and I did not know that the 
white doctor gave me medicine. I talked 


254 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

much to the soldiers and the doctors, hut I 
do not remember what I said to them.” 

“Doga, what sickness did you have?” 
asked Jim. 

“ It was a fever,” the Indian replied, “ and 
I was very thirsty, but the doctors gave me 
very little water. And after I remembered 
where I was, I had to lie on a bed many 
days; and when I got up, I could not walk, 
for I was feeble like a very old man.” 

Then Ganadoga told the lads that he had 
not called on their people at Newburgh, but 
he had spent the time of a moon with his own 
people, the Oneidas, near Schenectady. 

“ My brother hunted game for me, and my 
mother cooked meat and made broth, and I 
ate and slept much till I was strong enough 
to travel, and now I am almost as strong as 
I was when we started on our long journey.” 

The lads offered their friend some roasted 
corn and cold venison. He ate a little of 
both, but told them that he had brought 
plenty of food from Fort Herkimer in his 
pack. Then he spread his blanket on the 
floor, saying: 

“ I have travelled many leagues to-day, 


JIM’S WORRY 255 

and now I must sleep, because I had not a 
good place to sleep in last night.” 

In the morning the white lads were much 
disappointed because Ganadoga would not 
go with them to Nundawahno’s cabin. 

“ You must not tell the Mohawks,” he 
urged, “ that I have visited you. I know 
that Kalohka has been at this camp, and he 
must not know that I have been here. I 
must leave now to prepare for our journey 
to Fort Niagara. In about a week I shall 
come back, and then I may go with you to 
the chief and your Indian mothers.” 

“ Doga, where are you going now? ” 
asked Jim anxiously. “And why can’t we 
go with you till noon? ” 

“No, you cannot go with me now,” in¬ 
sisted Ganadoga. “ Three men are too 
easily seen by scouts and hunters, and I must 
make a quick trip to the Lake Skanodario, to 
find a place where we can leave the land and 
go upon the water.” 

“ But I am afraid you will be gone again 
a long time,” Jim expressed his anxiety. 

“ No, Little Brother,” replied the Oneida, 
trying to quiet Jim’s anxiety, “ the soldier 


256 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

doctor said I would never be sick again with 
the fever, and I do not fear other dangers.” 

After Ganadoga had eaten a little venison 
and roasted corn, and had given, as a great 
treat, some salt pork from Fort Herkimer 
to his white friends, he shook hands with 
them and set out on a trail that led north¬ 
ward into the forest. 

Jim was almost ready to cry when Gana¬ 
doga had disappeared, and he had to hold 
himself not to scream and run after him. 

“ I wanted to ask him,” he almost sobbed, 
“ how—how we could get away. We can’t 
run off, Jonas. You know we can’t! ” 

“ I don’t know, Jimmie,” Jonas spoke 
kindly. “ You must stop worrying about 
that. Perhaps Doga can tell us how to get 
away. 

“Now let us get ready, Jim, to go on a 
deer-hunt to-day. If we have luck, we can 
smoke the meat right away; and to-night we 
can surprise our mothers, when we come 
home with a whole load of meat. I shall 
load the guns now, and you go and tell our 
mothers that we are going on a long hunt 
west of camp.” 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


THE WHITE LADS MYSTIFIED 

In about a week, Ganadoga returned with 
a most wonderful assortment of beads, and 
with two small bolts of the brightest red 
cloth Jim had ever seen. 

Even Jim could not resist the temptation 
to open the little bags of beads and to spread 
them out on a large piece of buckskin, where 
he arranged them in a little rainbow of 
colors. 

To Oyaseh and Ganowah, this glittering 
rainbow of shining glass beads and the bolts 
of dazzling red cloth were irresistible. Here 
was a display of beauty and wealth which 
surpassed all their dreams; for they had been 
desperately poor ever since General Sullivan 
had made his destructive raid into the 
Iroquois country. They had been so poor 
that seldom had they had enough to eat. 
But now they were once more almost as 

happy as in the good days before the war. 

257 


258 


THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 


The two white sons had raised enough corn 
and squash and beans to carry them com¬ 
fortably through the winter. 

Both of the women cried at the prospect 
of losing their white sons, but to their simple 
minds the present of the rainbow of beads 
and the dazzling red cloth was irresistible. 
They were soon persuaded by Ganadoga’s 
fluent speech to let the white sons go to seek 
their lost brother and to return to their own 
people. 

But Ganowah was heart-broken and 
Oyaseh looked as sad as at the time when 
she came to dress Jonas’s wound. 

“ I knew you would not stay with us,” she 
repeated to Jonas. “ Only bad white men 
stay with the Indians. You have been a 
good son, and I shall always think of you 
when I pray to the Great Spirit. But now 
you must go to seek your lost brother, and 
if you find him, you must return to your 
white mother, so she may not be sad as I was, 
when my two sons did not return from the 
war with Tayendanaga, the great war chief 
of the Mohawks.” 

Ganadoga and the white lads left that 


THE WHITE LADS MYSTIFIED 259 


same day, when the sun had passed half-way 
down to the western horizon. 

Jim and Jonas had wished to stay until 
the following day, but Ganadoga insisted 
that they must go at once. 

When the moment came for the white lads 
to take leave of their Indian mothers and of 
the good old chief Nundawahno, Jim’s voice 
was choked with feeling; and as soon as he 
could, he seized his pack and ran off on the 
trail they were to follow northward. 

Half an hour later, Jonas and Ganadoga 
found him sitting on a log near the trail, 
looking more sad and forlorn than they had 
ever seen him in all the dangers and hard¬ 
ships of their journey. 

“ Jonas, if I hadn’t run,” he told the older 
boy, “ I should just have started to bawl out 
loud. But why couldn’t we stay till to¬ 
morrow? ” 

“ Little Brother,” replied Ganadoga 
seriously, “ it was very hard for Ganowah 
and Oyaseh to let their white sons go. If 
we had waited till to-morrow they would 
have talked it over with the other women in 
camp, and then they might have changed 


2G0 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

their minds. The young warriors may come 
home any day, and I feel sure they would 
object to letting you go. 

“ I know that they grumbled a good deal 
amongst themselves at the decision of the 
council, but they kept quiet, because they ex¬ 
pected to eat some of the corn next winter 
which you and Jonas have raised. But if 
they had come home and had learned that 
you were to go away, they would have caused 
us much trouble, and all of them would have 
demanded a present. For you must know 
that there is no real law in an Indian camp 
as there is among white men and in the camp 
of white soldiers. If the chief has enough 
influence, the warriors obey him; but if he 
wants them to do something which they all 
dislike very much, then they sometimes re¬ 
fuse to obey him.” 

Before the sun set, Ganadoga left the trail 
and made a camp for the night in a grove of 
sugar maples, a sugar bush, as it is called by 
white men in these days. Here they slept in 
a bark cabin, which the Indians had built for 
use in the maple-sugar season. 

Ganadoga called his friends early in the 


THE WHITE LADS MYSTIFIED 2G1 


morning, and they marched swiftly all day 
until in the middle of the afternoon they 
reached the west shore of Irondequoit Bay, 
which runs out southward from Lake 
Ontario. Here they waited till it was almost 
dark. Then Ganadoga led them down to 
the shore, where they found a good elm-bark 
canoe. 

“ Doga, did you know the canoe was 
here? ” asked Jim. 

“ Yes,” replied the guide, “ I knew it was 
here.” 

Jim did not ask any more questions, but 
Ganadoga saw that he was puzzled and sur¬ 
prised and wanted to ask many questions, 
and he anticipated Jim’s questions good- 
naturedly by solving the mystery of the 
canoe. 

“ I did not make it, Little Brother; and 
it was not brought here by Indian witch¬ 
craft,” he told him. “ TanuKoga left it here 
for us. It Has been here several days.” 

At the mention of Tanuhoga’s name 
Jonas stared at Ganadoga. 

“Well, Doga, I declare,” he exclaimed, 
“ I shall not be surprised if some day you 


262 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

tell us you have been across the salt water to 
see the king of England. Was Tanuhoga 
with you in the hospital at West Point? ” 

“ No, he was not there,” the Oneida re¬ 
plied, a little displeased at the thrust. “ I 
told you the truth about my being in the 
sick-house with a long fever, but I have seen 
Tanuhoga quite often; and we shall see him 
again. Did you see the green twig of ash 
under the canoe, brother? ” 

Neither Jonas nor Jim had seen it. 

“ It was there,” Ganadoga told them, 
“ and it means that all is well and that Tanu¬ 
hoga will meet us at Fort Niagara. He will 
not fail. 

“ A dry twig of ash would have told me: 
‘ Travel with great care and look out for 
danger!’” 

“You Indians are strange people,” de¬ 
clared Jonas. “ I suppose Tanuhoga could 
hide a jack-knife in the woods a hundred 
miles from here, and then you could go and 
find it.” 

“ Yes, brother, I could do that,” answered 
Ganadoga, smiling, “ if Tanuhoga told me 
in what place he had hidden it. 


THE WHITE LADS MYSTIFIED 263 


“We Indians know our way and can find 
things and places in the forest because we 
and our fathers have always lived in the 
forest; and white sailors can find their way 
across the big salt water, where, for many 
days and nights, you cannot see the land.” 

When the three travellers had crossed 
Irondequoit Bay, they camped for the night. 
Ganadoga built a fire and said: “ Friends, 
we shall make a feast to-night. We 
travelled fast because I was afraid the 
young warriors of Oyaseh’s camp might have 
come home and might be following us. We 
have come about thirty miles. To-morrow, 
if the wind is right and the waves are not 
too high, we shall start for Fort Niagara, 
which is about seventy miles to the west, 
where the great river Neagah flows into the 
big lake Skanodario.” 


CHAPTER XXIX 


ON LAKE SKANODARIO 

When, early next morning, the elm-bark 
canoe passed out of the narrow sheltered 
bay, Jim’s heart almost failed him. To the 
west, east, and north, there was an endless 
expanse of shining water. A fresh breeze 
was blowing from the southeast and some 
miles out from shore the white spray of 
thousands of rolling and breaking waves 
glistened in the morning sun. 

Far out on the lake a white sail was visible. 
“It is a ship of the English,” explained 
Ganadoga. “It is sailing from Oswego to 
Fort Niagara, and it will reach the fort 
before sunset, because it is sailing with a fair 
wind.” 

The south shore of Lake Skanodario is 

almost everywhere so high that a wind from 

the south leaves a stretch of quiet water 

under the high bank, where canoes and small 

boats may pass safely. But the winds that 

264 


ON LAKE SKANODAKIO 


265 


come from the north roll up big waves, which 
dash against the banks; and every year they 
wash away large pieces of the land. 

All day long the three travellers glided 
along westward under the lee of the high 
bank. It seemed to Jim that Ganadoga 
steered too far from shore, where the wind 
caused a swell that gave him a touch of sea¬ 
sickness. But Ganadoga said it was safer 
to run at some distance from shore. 

“ There are some big rocks near shore,” 
he explained, “ that might wreck us. And 
if we paddle within reach of guns from the 
shore, the British and Indian scouts might 
see us and compel us to land, so we must 
travel at a safe distance from land.” 

Jim soon grew tired of paddling, and in 
the afternoon Jonas made him lie down in 
the bottom of the canoe and take a nap. 

Jonas himself also had to take many short 
rests. The canoe had no seats and each oars¬ 
man knelt on his blanket. Ganadoga alone 
never seemed to tire of using the paddle, with 
quick, short strokes. 

“ Paddling a canoe is to an Indian like 
walking,” he explained laughing. “ My 


266 


THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

mother took me along in a canoe on the 
Mohawk when I was so little that she had 
to give me a very small paddle.” 

There is no harbor for large vessels on the 
south shore of Lake Ontario between Os¬ 
wego and Fort Niagara, but a number of 
small creeks enter the big lake through little 
bays or ponds which make beautiful and safe 
landing-places for canoes and rowboats. 

Into one of these ponds, formed by a small 
stream now called Marsh Creek, Ganadoga 
steered the canoe, when the sun stood low in 
the west. 

“ We have come half the distance to Fort 
Niagara,” he said, “ and now we must eat 
and make a place to sleep.” 

There was no sign of a permanent Indian 
village at the place, but several old campfire 
places showed that hunters and travellers 
had at times stopped at the place. 

After the lads had eaten of the food 
brought from the Mohawk camp and Fort 
Herkimer and had prepared their sleeping- 
places under the trees, the white lads asked 
Ganadoga to tell them all the news of the 


war. 


ON LAKE SKANODAKIO 


2G7 


“ Of the war I cannot tell you much,” 
began the Oneida, “ but you should know 
that I wrote a letter to your parents from 
Fort Herkimer. I told them that you lived 
in a camp on the Genesee, that you were well 
and that Little Brother had begun to grow, 
and that in a few days we should start to¬ 
gether for Fort Niagara. A good Oneida 
scout will deliver the letter to your parents.” 

Jonas and Jim were very thankful to 
Ganadoga for his thoughtfulness, because it 
had been impossible for them to write home. 

“ The war is dead on the Hudson,” con¬ 
tinued Ganadoga. “ The American soldiers 
still have the big guns on the mountains at 
West Point, and the big chain is still 
stretched across the river, so the British are 
afraid to come up the Hudson. 

“ Cornwallis is still in Virginia, and I 
heard that Washington has left New Jersey, 
and there is a rumor that a French admiral 
is coming to Chesapeake Bay with many big 
war-ships, but I do not know if all I have 
heard is true.” 

“ This is now the month of September 
according to my reckoning,” said Jonas. 


2G8 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

“ Yes/’ agreed the Oneida., “ it is the moon 
when the birds start south, and in the coun¬ 
try of the Iroquois it will soon be winter, but 
in Virginia the soldiers can march and fight 
all winter.” 

Next morning the wind had veered around 
to the northeast, and great white-capped 
waves broke on the little sandy beach that 
separated the big lake from the pond on 
which the lads had made their camp. 

For a week the south shore was impassable 
for a canoe, because the wind swung around 
to the northwest; and the waves were too 
big, although the steady wind never grew 
into a gale. 

The lads had plenty of time to sleep and 
talk; and Ganadoga was not worried. He 
said no Indians or British would come to 
this camp site as long as the wind blew 
across the lake. 

Jim’s patience was again sorely tried, but 
Ganadoga would not risk travelling by land 
through a hostile country. 

“We have time enough,” he maintained, 
“ and I do not wish you to be captured by 
the Mohawks a second time.” 


ON LAKE SKANODARIO 


269 


There were plenty of fish in the creek and 
the Oneida showed Jim how to spear them 
with a pointed and barbed stick. When Jim 
was not fishing he went out after small game 
with Ganadoga’s hunting bow, and when he 
grew tired of hunting, he gathered walnuts, 
butternuts, and hazelnuts. There were al¬ 
ways many ducks and coots, or mud-hens, 
on the pond, but Ganadoga would not let 
Jim fire a gun, and he could not hunt 
them with the bow for fear of losing his 
arrows. 

The quacking of the ducks and the bob¬ 
bing of the coots acted as standing challenges 
on Jim, and he shied many a stone at them, 
but he never hit one, and the birds, soon 
learning to pay little attention to him, be¬ 
came a source of constant annoyance to Jim, 
but a source of much amusement to Jonas 
and Ganadoga; for the birds acted as if the 
pond belonged to them. After they had 
swum over to the other side, they ignored 
the intruder. 

At the end of a week, the lake became calm 
and Ganadoga advised that they should now 
leave the mouth of Marsh Creek and con- 


270 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

tinue their journey to Fort Niagara by way 
of Lake Ontario. 

Jim had become so attached to this camp¬ 
ing-place that he wished to stay a few 
days longer, so he could gather some wild 
rice, which was just ripening, but Gan- 
adoga thought delay might prove danger¬ 
ous. 

“ British scouts,” he warned his friends, 
“ or Indian hunters might turn in here; and 
if that should happen, there is no telling 
what trouble they might cause us.” 

The three friends started at daylight and 
expected to make the trip in one day. But 
weather conditions on the Great Lakes are 
treacherous. In October and November 
violent storms roll up dangerous choppy 
waves; and in summer, dense fogs appear 
quite suddenly. 

The lads had been making good progress 
for some five or six hours, when a dark low 
cloud began to appear in the west. 

“ Doga, I think it is going to rain,” said 
Jim pointing westward. “Look at that 
cloud.” 

“ I fear it is something worse than a rain,” 


ON LAKE SKANODABIO 271 

replied Ganadoga. “ It looks to me as if 
we were going to run into a fog.” 

Sooner than the white lads had expected, 
the canoe was enveloped in a dense chilly 
fog, which made the travellers feel as if they 
had suddenly run into late autumn weather. 

“ Friends, we must go ashore,” said Gana¬ 
doga. “We might wreck our canoe on the 
rocks or get lost on the big lake.” 

By the time they had landed, the fog had 
grown so dense that they could see less than 
fifty yards in either direction. 

The place where they had run ashore was 
no natural landing-place at all. A steep 
clay bank, some thirty feet high, fell straight 
down to a narrow beach, strewn with boul¬ 
ders of all sizes. 

“ It is a bad place to land,” observed 
Ganadoga, “ but the south shore of the lake 
is like this for nearly the whole distance from 
Oswego to Fort Niagara, except where a 
creek enters the lake, but we cannot look for 
a creek in this fog.” 

So they dragged and pushed the canoe 
part way up the steep bank and turned it 
over in a gully, where the waves could not 


272 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

reach it and where the wind could not blow 
it down, in case a storm should spring up. 

Then they carried their blankets, guns, 
food, and canvas shelter up the steep bank 
and made camp in a sheltered spot a short 
distance back from shore. It was hard work, 
but all three of them were hardened campers 
by this time and they went at the work with 
a will. 

“ Little Brother, you may build a good 
fire,” said Ganadoga, “ so we can cook our 
food and be warm and dry, for no one will 
see our smoke in the fog in this lonely place.” 

Next morning the lake was clear and calm 
again; and about noon, Ganadoga landed 
the canoe on a fine sandy beach, which sepa¬ 
rated the lake from a beautiful wood-fringed 
pond, part of which was covered with water- 
lilies and tall wild rice. A small creek cut 
through the sand-bar into the lake, and a 
flock of mallards arose noisily from the 
pond, as the travellers carried their canoe 
across the sand-bar. 

“ The ducks on this pond are wild,” ex¬ 
plained Ganadoga, “ because hunters often 
come here from Fort Niagara. This is Four 


ON LAKE SKANODARIO 


273 


Mile Creek, but we cannot see the fort on 
account of the high bank and the timber. 
We shall eat here and rest for a while. 

“ You may boil plenty of corn and fiy 
some meat while I walk up the creek a little 
way.” 

Before the corn was quite done, Ganadoga 
returned, and to the surprise of the white 
lads brought a guest with him. It was 
Tanuhoga, the young war chief from the 
Genesee. 

“ Oh, Doga,” Jim blurted out, “ where did 
you find him? ” 

“ Little Brother,” replied the Oneida 
smiling, “ I found him asleep under a big 
tree on the creek, where I had promised to 
meet him. We shall now make a feast for 
our brother.” 

The four friends did make a feast, and 
early in the afternoon they rounded the 
point near the big old French stone fort, 
steered their canoe into the broad and swift 
Niagara River, and lifted it ashore near the 
spot where the men of the United States 
Coast Guard now keep their boats at old 
Fort Niagara. 


274 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

Jim’s heart beat fast. The place looked 
forbidding to him and more formidable than 
the fortifications at West Point. “ Jonas,” 
he whispered, “ what will that big red-coated 
guard do to us? ” 


CHAPTER XXX 


BIG NEWS 

Tanuhoga spoke a few words to the red- 
coated guard, and the man waved his hand 
to the four friends as a signal to pass on. 

Jim would have liked to know what Tanu¬ 
hoga had said to the guard, but he did not 
quite have the courage to ask him. 

The young boy was very much surprised. 

He had expected that there would be some 

excitement in the fort at the appearance of 

two Indians and two white lads, but there. 

was nothing of the kind. There were about 

four hundred English soldiers and many 

visiting Indians in the fort. Soldiers off 

duty and some visiting Indians looked with 

indifference at the strangers, while officers 

and men on duty paid no attention to them 

at all. Nobody put the strangers in jail or 

in a guard-house; they were not even taken 

before an officer for examination. It was a 

decidedly tame reception compared with the 

275 


276 THE IKOQUOIS SCOUT 

welcome the two white lads had received in 
the Indian camp. 

Somehow Tanuhoga seemed well ac¬ 
quainted about the place. He led the way 
to a tent in which some straw had been 
spread on the ground. “ We sleep here,” he 
said, and the three men put down their 
packs. 

“ Mess call pretty soon,” he remarked. 
“ You can go and wash.” 

For the first time since the white lads had 
been captured, they had a chance to use soap, 
towel, and comb, and see their faces in a 
mirror. At the Indian camp they had just 
washed and bathed in the creek or river. 
Their hair had grown long, and their faces 
were almost as brown as those of the In¬ 
dians. Their hats had been lost and they 
had gone about bareheaded like the Indians. 

When mess call sounded Tanuhoga led 
the way to a table which seemed to be re¬ 
served for visitors, and here Jim became very 
much interested. If being prisoners of the 
British was like this every day, he thought 
he could stand it for some time. There was 
none of that scarcity of food that had been 


BIO NEWS 


277 


so evident in the American stockade and at 
Fort Herkimer. Jim wondered if the Brit¬ 
ish commander was giving them a feast. 

They had bread and butter, fresh beef, 
even potatoes, not yet very common in those 
days, and real tea with real sugar. 

“ Jonas, if they had any cream,” whis¬ 
pered Jim, “ I could think we were at home 
on the Hudson. 

“ Doga,” he remarked, when the four 
friends were walking back to their tent, “ the 
English are really pretty fine fellows, if they 
treat all their prisoners in this way. If they 
are like this, why don’t they quit fighting 
us?” 

“ Perhaps they will quit pretty soon,” re¬ 
plied Jonas. “ Before the snow flies we 
ought to hear some big news.” 

It developed that the English at Fort 
Niagara were not at all desirous of having 
any more prisoners. When Tanuhoga, who 
was well known to the commander and 
trusted by him, had several days ago as¬ 
sured this officer that his friends were not 
American spies and would not cause trou¬ 
ble, he had been told that he might bring 


278 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

them in. They might all stay as long as they 
liked and see what they could find out about 
the lost young American. 

The white lads wrote a letter home telling 
of their whereabouts and present plans. 

They intended now to talk to soldiers and 
Indians and thus try to discover a clue to 
the movements of Nathan. 

The story that Nathan had been brought 
in as a prisoner by some Seneca Indians they 
soon verified. But to learn how he had es¬ 
caped or what had become of him was more 
difficult. 

After they had gained the confidence of 
some British soldiers, one of them told the 
following story in his broad cockney Eng¬ 
lish: 

“ It was a foggy night. I was on guard 
duty at the boat-landing. As I walked 
along the shore, I thought I saw something 
go past. I could not make out in the fog 
whether it was a boat or a raft, but I thought 
I saw a man stand up with a pole or oar. 
The whole thing passed so quickly and was 
so dim that I did not feel sure that I had 
really seen anything. I called to the spook, 


BIG NEWS 


279 


but it was gone, and I received no answer. 
The current there runs about ten miles an 
hour into Lake Ontario. 

“ I knew quite well that the officer of the 
day would send no men out on the lake in 
the fog. If I had given an alarm, the men 
would have laughed at me and the sergeant 
would have cussed me out; so I kept my 
mouth shut. 

“ The next morning Nathan Stillwell was 
gone, and an old raft from which soldiers 
and boys used to fish was also gone. Then I 
knew that I had not seen a ghost in the fog, 
but I kept my mouth shut. 

“ How the young man reached land, I do 
not know, but I know that he was not 
drowned or lost in the fog, for about a month 
later one of my friends saw him at Presque 
Isle on Lake Erie. 

“ Now I have told you what I know about 
the lost young man, and all I ask of you is 
that you be discreet and not get me into 
trouble. We soldiers are all homesick and 
hope this horrible war may soon be over, so 
we can leave this terrible Indian wilderness 
behind us and go back to old England.” 


280 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

Both Ganadoga and Tanuhoga were con¬ 
vinced that the man had spoken the truth. 
But why should Nathan have gone to 
Presque Isle? 

There seemed only one reasonable answer 
to this question. Presque Isle is a point of 
land within the present city of Erie, Penn¬ 
sylvania. Nathan had always wanted to see 
what was then the West. Possibly he was 
on his way to Pittsburgh, where George 
Rogers Clark enlisted some of his men for 
his campaign into the Illinois country. It 
would be very difficult, if not impossible to 
trace him in that wild country, so at least 
it appeared to Jonas and Jim. 

Ganadoga and Tanuhoga said the red- 
coated soldier had given them very good 
news. They should now all wait at Fort 
Niagara until the weather grew cold. Then 
many Indians would come to Fort Niagara 
to get something to eat. They would talk 
with these Indians; and, maybe, they would 
hear some more news. Then in spring, when 
travelling was good again, maybe they could 
all go to the Ohio or Illinois country and 
find the lost white brother. 


BIG NEWS 281 

Jim was very much disgusted with this 
plan. 

“ Good Heavens! Jonas,” he expressed 
his feeling, “ all fall and winter they want 
us to sit around here! I’m tired of fishing. 
You can’t go swimming in the river, be¬ 
cause the awfully swift current will carry 
you out into the lake. I wish I was back at 
Newburgh; there I could have at least a 
fight every day.” 

“ Why don’t you go swimming at Four 
Mile Creek? ” asked Jonas. “ You know 
there is a fine beach at that place.” 

“ Oh, you know well enough, Jonas, that 
I can’t go there alone. Some Indians would 
catch me again, and then you and Doga and 
Tanuhoga would have to hunt around after 
me, too, and we’d all become Indians and 
never get home again. 

“If you are going to stay here all winter, 
then I’m going back to my Indian mother. 
I don’t like it here! ” 

However, the autumn passed quickly 
enough. The four friends explored together 
the wonderful gorge of the Niagara, with 
its miles of wild, racing, and leaping rapids. 


282 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

The two white lads climbed down under and. 
behind the falls on the American side, but 
here the two Indians would not follow. All 
four of them built a fire and roasted venison 
on an overhanging rock, which about seventy 
years later fell with a great crash down into 
the gorge, a hundred and sixty feet below. 

The nights grew cool and in the morning 
there was frost on the grass. Most of the 
leaves had fallen, and thousands of wild 
ducks appeared on quiet stretches of the 
river, on the lake, and on Four Mile Pond. 

And then one day some really big news 
came to the far outpost on the Niagara: 
Cornwallis and all his men, about eight thou¬ 
sand of them, had been captured by Wash¬ 
ington and his French allies. The war was 
over! England would never send another 
big army to America. She had too many 
enemies in Europe and Asia, and many Eng¬ 
lishmen had long been opposed to the war. 

Jim and Jonas both wanted to run about 
in the fort and shout. But such celebration 
was impossible. They could not offend the 
English officers and soldiers, who had treated 
them so nobly. But celebrate they must. 


BIG NEWS 


283 


It was the last day of October, twelve 
days after Washington’s great success on the 
nineteenth of the month. 

An hour before dark the four friends 
landed at Four Mile Creek. Their bark 
canoe was loaded to the gunwales. There 
was venison and fish, bread and butter, bacon 
and beef, even some cookies, and real tea and 
sugar. How and where Tanuhoga had se¬ 
cured all these he did not tell. His only an¬ 
swer was: “ All good medicine. I got him 
all good.” 

Jim was told to build a bonfire of drift¬ 
wood and any other kind of wood he could 
find. Both Jim and Jonas yelled their 
throats sore for George Washington and the 
army, and Ganadoga and Tanuhoga gave 
their real Indian war-whoops, just to add to 
the fun and the noise made by their white 
friends. 

An English patrol boat passed, and 
landed two men to find out what the bonfire 
and all the noise was about. 

Jim heard one of the men call out, “ Just 
a bunch of wild Indians having a feast! ” 

“ Hang the Indians! ” a voice came from 


284 


THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 


the boat. “ They are always feasting. They 
will eat the whole British Empire into bank¬ 
ruptcy! ” 


CHAPTER XXXI 


INTO THE NEW UNKNOWN 

The wisdom of Tanuhoga’s plan of re¬ 
maining at Fort Niagara during the winter 
became evident as soon as the cold weather 
set in about the first of December. 

Indians of many tribes and from many 
distant localities came to this important 
English fort at the mouth of the Niagara 
River; for Fort Niagara was second in im¬ 
portance on the Great Lakes only to Fort 
Detroit. 

There came members of all the Iroquois 
tribes, although not many came of the 
Oneidas and Tuscaroras. Rut there came, 
also, warriors and scouts from the powerful 
tribes then living in Ohio and Illinois. All 
these talked freely to the two Iroquois, 
Ganadoga and Tanuhoga. 

“ We should have to travel a year,” Gana¬ 
doga told his two white friends, “ to talk to 
the warriors and scouts of so many tribes, 

and they would not tell us the truth so freely 

285 


286 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

as they do here in the English fort, there¬ 
fore, you should be patient and willing to 
wait. We may hear of your lost brother 
before the birds return north.” 

Some of the Indians brought prisoners to 
the fort, whom they gave up for gifts of food 
and clothing. 

How their two Iroquois friends could tell 
to what tribes the many Indians belonged 
remained a mystery to Jim and Jonas, be¬ 
cause all Indians looked much alike to them. 

The two white lads seldom were allowed 
to meet any of the Indians. “ They would 
tell you nothing,” Ganadoga insisted. “ We 
can talk to them because some of our men 
speak their languages, and some of the 
Western Indians can speak the Mohawk 
language.” 

When members of the Seneca tribe were 
in the fort, Ganadoga always kept his two 
friends in hiding, because he was afraid that 
they might claim the two lads as their cap¬ 
tives and demand that they be given up to 
them. 

It was in the month of March when Gan¬ 
adoga brought some news. 


INTO THE NEW UNKNOWN 287 

“ We have talked to an Indian who has 
been at the falls of the Ohio,” he told his 
friends. “ Your brother has been in Ken¬ 
tucky with the great white Chief Clark. 
When the ice has gone out of Lake Erie we 
shall travel to Kentucky, and Tanuhoga will 
go with us, so you will not be made captives 
again, for the western warriors might kill 
you and take your scalps to the English hair- 
buyer at Detroit.” 

The falls of the Ohio are at the present 
city of Louisville, near which Clark built a 
fort. 

On a fine day early in April, 1782, the 
four friends paddled their bark canoe from 
Fort Niagara against the swift current of 
the Niagara River to Lewiston. At the 
latter place began a great portage trail, 
seven miles long, past the wild rapids and 
the Falls of Niagara. 

At Lewiston the four men found a Brit¬ 
ish army wagon, which transported them, 
their canoe, and packs to Fort Schlosser, 
which stood in those days about a mile and 
a quarter above the great falls. Between 
Lewiston and Fort Schlosser there had long 


288 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

been a wagon road, one of the oldest in 
America, built by the French before the 
French and Indian War. The road followed 
the old portage trail of the Indians. 

At Fort Schlosser, which the French 
called Fort Little Niagara, the four friends 
put their canoe once more on the river and 
paddled up-stream toward Lake Erie. 

When they had made camp in the evening 
some fifteen miles west of Fort Schlosser, 
and about five miles from the site of the 
present city of Buffalo, Jim could no longer 
control his anxiety. 

“ Doga,” he asked, “ how can you and 
Tanuhoga know the way to Kentucky when 
you have never been there? And can you 
find the way home if we go there? ” 

“ Yes, Little Brother,” replied Ganadoga, 
“ we know the way.” 

Jim looked still doubtful and anxious, and 
Ganadoga tried to quiet his fears. 

“ White men,” he said, “ tell of many 

countries and distant seas in their books. 

We Indians learn of manv rivers and trails 

•/ 

from the mouths of our fathers and the old 
men of our people. We know that the great 


INTO THE NEW UNKNOWN 289 


river Ohio flows past the fort of Chief 
Clark” 

“ But how can you find the river Ohio? ” 
asked Jim still uneasy. “ Jonas and I don’t 
know where it is, and we are not travelling 
now in the country of the Iroquois. Per¬ 
haps we shall get lost, because we are so far 
away from your country.” 

“ No, Little Brother,” replied Ganadoga 
patiently, “ we shall not get lost. We know 
the way although we have never travelled in 
this country. We have talked to many In¬ 
dians and they have told us the way which 
is easy to find.” 

“ I am sure Jonas and I could not find it,” 
Jim interrupted, “ but I know Indians can 
find places which white people can’t find. 
I guess you can do it, because you travelled 
in canoes and on trails ever since you were 
small boys.” 

“ Yes, since we were very little boys,” 
Ganadoga repeated smiling. “ To-morrow 
or next day, we shall carry our canoe to the 
waters which flow to the river Ohio. You 
will see that we know the way; and it may 
be that we shall find your lost brother in the 


290 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

country which the white men call Kentucky. 
Our travelling will be easy, because we shall 
go with the stream for more than two hun¬ 
dred leagues.” 

Jim did not have the courage to ask any 
more questions. He rolled himself up in his 
blankets and fell asleep. But in the morning 
it seemed to him that in his dreams he had 
been travelling down a large river all night. 
The river was always growing larger, but 
it never came to an end, and Ganadoga said 
even the Indians did not know where it 
ended, for none of them had ever travelled to 
the end of it. 

“You must have dreamed about the 
Mississippi,” Jonas remarked. “ The In¬ 
dians in this part of the country know the 
Ohio, but of the Mississippi they know 
neither the beginning nor the end.” 

As Ganadoga had promised, the two In¬ 
dians found the portage from Lake Erie to 
the Ohio. They carried their bark canoe, 
not without great labor, from Lake Erie to 
Lake Chautauqua; and from this lake they 
paddled down Conewango Creek, one of the 
headwaters of the Ohio. At this time of the 


INTO THE NEW UNKNOWN 291 


year all small streams ran full, and they had 
no great difficulty in reaching the Ohio. 

They travelled slowly and made many 
camps, living on small game, fish, and tur¬ 
tles. 

At times one of the Indians would be gone 
for a week, but either Ganadoga or Tanu- 
hoga always remained with the white boys. 

They met small parties of Indians, but the 
Iroquois and their two white companions 
were always treated as friends, although 
even the white lads knew that these Indians 
had been on raids or were preparing to raid 
the scattered settlements in Kentucky. 

About the tenth of August, 1782, Gana¬ 
doga one evening returned to camp very 
much excited. 

“ My friends,” he related, “ I have big 
news. I have talked with some Shawnee 
warriors and they have told me that the lost 
white brother is in one of the forts the white 
men have built. He is either at Lexington 
or at a place the white men call Bryan’s 
Station, about five miles north of Lexing¬ 
ton. They saw him on the road between the 
two forts about two or three moons ago.” 


292 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

In the East, at this time, the war was 
standing still; but in Kentucky, the year 
1782 was the bloody year. The Indians 
made many raids and attacked several of the 
fortified stations. 

Some days later, when the four friends 
had made a fireless camp within a few miles 
of Bryan’s Station, Ganadoga again came in 
with big news. 

“ My friends,” he said with a worried 
expression, “ we are in great danger. 
There are many Indians in the forest 
near us, and the bad white man Simon 
Girty is with them. I think they are plan¬ 
ning to make a rush into the stockade of 
Bryan’s Station. I have crawled up to their 
campfire and listened to their talk. If they 
find us, I am afraid that they will kill Jim 

and Jonas and take their scalps to Detroit.” 

% 

Jonas advised that they should all try to 
reach Bryan’s Station after dark, but the 
two Iroquois were afraid to enter the Ameri¬ 
can fort. 

“ The Americans are very angry at the 
Indians,” they explained. “ They may not 
let us in, and they will not believe that we 


INTO THE NEW UNKNOWN 293 


are friendly Iroquois, because we are very 
far, maybe five hundred miles, from our own 
country. They will think we are English 
spies from Detroit and some of them will 
kill us.” 

After talking things over some more, it 
was decided that the white lads alone should 
enter the stockade. 

Near the fort was a field of tall corn, ex¬ 
tending along the road from Lexington. In 
this field the four friends spent the night. 

“ You must now walk into the fort,” 
Ganadoga said to the white lads after the 
heavy wooden gates had been opened in the 
morning. “ Tanuhoga and I shall hide close 
by in the forest, and if you live, we shall find 
you, in a day or two after the Indians have 
made their fight against the fort. You must 
not loiter here, but walk into the fort.” 

There were some men now working in the 
field and some horses, cattle, and pigs had 
been turned out. Jonas and Jim soon were 
convinced that it was not safe for them to 
loiter in the cornfield; for either the men in 
the field or the watchmen in the block¬ 
houses had discovered some Indian spies, and 


294 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

the men were hastening back to the stockade 
and also drove in the stock that was within 
easy reach. 

The defenders of the fort were glad to 
give shelter to the white lads, but they were 
too busy now to ask many questions. 

Some bold runners were quickly sent to 
Lexington for aid, the men took their sta¬ 
tions at the loopholes and in the block¬ 
houses, guns were loaded and bullets run, 
and water had to be brought into the fort, 
because there was no spring or well inside 
of the stockade. 

The backwoodsmen of those days pos¬ 
sessed a keen practical insight into Indian 
psychology. From what they had observed 
and knew of recent raids, they felt sure that 
a large force of Indians was quietly sur¬ 
rounding the fort, although not a single 
warrior was in sight. 

There were about fifty men in the stock¬ 
ade besides a number of women and chil¬ 
dren. The fort might have to stand a siege 
of several days, and a good supply of water 
was urgently required for both humans and 
animals. 


INTO THE NEW UNKNOWN 295 


If the men went to the spring, the con¬ 
cealed warriors would surely fire on them 
and try to cut them off. But if the women 
would take the risk, the Indians would not 
fire and betray their position to the armed 
defenders. 

The women, both old women and young 
girls, took the risk. The few advance scouts 
hiding near the spring would not betray the 
plan of attack and the women were allowed 
to return unharmed with their filled pails 
and buckets. 

It would make too long a story to tell 
here how the Indians were completely foiled 
in their attempt to surprise Bryan’s Station 
on August 16th, 1782. 

They soon gave up the attack, after losing 
several warriors. During the night they 
tried to set fire to the fort. They sent flam¬ 
ing arrows to the roofs of the cabins and 
some warriors rushed up to the stockade with 
burning torches, but the defenders were alert 
and did not allow a fire to get started. 

In the whole long history of our Indian 
wars, the Indians have only very rarely car¬ 
ried out a long siege. The siege of Detroit 


296 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

by Pontiac is the most notable exception to 
this rule. 

Generally, if a place could not be taken 
by a surprise attack, the warriors would keep 
up a desultory fire for a day or tw r o, and 
then the force would break up and leave. 

The attack on Bryan’s Station ended in 
that way. On the day after the attack the 
Indians withdrew. Their lack of a real mili¬ 
tary organization and the absence of any 
kind of a quartermaster’s department made 
it impossible for them to besiege an enemy 
longer than a day or two. 

It was now that Jonas had an opportunity 
to look around among the men in the stock¬ 
ade. Jim had only a very vague recollection 
of tall Nathan Stillwell. 

There was not a man clad in any kind of 
uniform. They were just keen-eyed back¬ 
woodsmen; lean, bearded, and long-haired. 
Beards and long hair afforded a natural pro¬ 
tection against sun and weather as well as 
against flies and mosquitoes, and of barbers 
there were few or none. 

It was now more than seven years that 
Nathan had left his father’s house to help 


INTO THE NEW UNKNOWN 297 

to survey some land grants in the Mohawk 
Valley. 

There was not a man at Bryan’s who 
looked like the slender almost beardless 
youth who left Newburgh in the spring of 
1775. 

There was, however, one gaunt, bearded 
man, apparently about thirty years old, 
whose walk and bearing did make Jonas 
think of Nathan; but Jonas reminded him¬ 
self that many of the lank frontiersmen had 
that easy swinging stride. The American 
frontier was not a country for stubby fat 
men, and men who could not sit easily on 
horseback. 

But now the man spoke and laughed, and 
there was a clear careless voice and an al¬ 
most boyish laugh, which Jonas had not for¬ 
gotten. ITe stepped up and looked the man 
in the face. 

“Are you Nathan Stillwell?” he asked, 
barely controlling his emotion, “or do you 
only have his voice? ” 

The man straightened up and looked at 
Jonas. 

“ I am Nathan Stillwell,” he spoke firmly. 


298 


THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

“ And you, are you my own brother, Jonas? 
You had a boy’s voice when I left home. 
How, under heaven, did you wander into 
this fort? ” 





“Are you Nathan Stillwell?”— Page 297 









CHAPTER XXXII 


THE LAST ORDER 

Nathan Stillwell had seen much of 
Kentucky in the campaigns of Clark, and 
like many adventurous pioneers, had not 
been able to resist the call of the fertile soil of 
Kentucky. A few miles from Bryan’s Sta¬ 
tion he had squatted near a fine stream, hop¬ 
ing to make good his title to the land, when 
peace should at last come to the war-weary 
country. He had built a log cabin, made a 
small clearing in the forest, and planted a 
patch of corn. When, a few days before 
the historical attack of August 16 th, he 
found signs of Indians in the forest near his 
cabin, his instinct told him what to do. He 
took his long rifle and ammunition and 
joined the men in Bryan’s stockade. 

“You must come home with us now,” 
Jonas insisted, “and show Father and 
Mother that you are alive. You have done 

your share of fighting the Indians.” 

299 


300 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

Two days after the hostile Indians had 
left the neighborhood, Jim saw an Indian 
hunting-shirt displayed on a pole near the 
corner of the cornfield on the Lexington 
road. It was the sign by which the two Iro¬ 
quois friends had promised to signal their 
presence to their white friends. 

Jim could not be held in the fort any 
longer. He found his friends in the corn¬ 
field and persuaded them that it was now 
quite safe to come into the stockade; because 
the white lads had had time to tell the story 
of their search for Nathan. 

Two runners were going to start east to 
Virginia, and each carried the following 
short letter to the farm of John Stillwell on 
the Hudson: 

“ Dear Parents: We have found Nathan 
and he is well, but we did not know him when 
we first saw him. He has a long beard, like 
Father, and long hair like an Indian. We 
are all coming home by way of Virginia. 
We think that is the safest way. We can- 
not start till Nathan has harvested his corn, 
and it may take us a long time to reach home, 
because we have to hunt for food as we 
travel.” 


THE LAST ORDER 


301 


There were four signatures attached to the 
letter, and Jim induced Tanuhoga to add his 
mark. 

The writers realized that possibly neither 
of the letters would ever reach Newburgh. 
Nor could they feel at all sure that their 
former letters had ever reached their desti¬ 
nation; for there was naturally no reliable 
mail service on the Indian frontier. 

In the log cabin of Nathan the five friends 
spent many happy but not idle days. Jonas 
and Nathan used the ax in clearing land and 
building a fence around Nathan’s field. 

Jim and the two Iroquois kept themselves 
busy supplying the cabin with game, and the 
appetite of the five occupants who had little 
else to eat would have appalled any white 
housekeeper, accustomed to feed her family 
a mixed diet. 

A proud boy was Jim, when he brought 
home his first wild turkey. Hunting was, 
however, not at all the only occupation of 
Jim and the two Iroquois. Every day they 
looked for signs of Indians, because the sum¬ 
mer of 1782 was for Kentucky the worst 
time of the war. 


302 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

The Western tribes, the powerful Wyan- 
dots, Shawnees, and others knew by this 
time that the whites in Kentucky were not 
straggling parties of hunters or trappers, 
but that they were farmers, who meant to 
settle and hold the land permanently. 

Nathan had a horse, which he had taken 
with him to the stockade, and his few head 
of cattle and pigs the Indians accidentally 
missed. Near the stockade, they had killed 
or driven off every head of stock. 

When the corn was husked Nathan found 
that he could not profitably dispose of his 
stock until spring, so the friends decided to 
remain over winter in Kentucky. 

One winter evening, when Tanuhoga and 
Ganadoga were talking of their own coun¬ 
try, the white lads learned what had become 
of Gray Wolf. 

On the morning after Jonas had punished 
him, the chief ordered two young men to es¬ 
cort him out of the camp. About a mile 
from camp, Gray Wolf attacked one of the 
men and was killed in the fight. 

Tanuhoga also had some news about 
Kalohka, Ganadoga’s enemy. With another 


THE LAST ORDER 


303 


young Mohawk he went on a raid into west¬ 
ern Pennsylvania in the summer of 1781. 
From that raid neither Kalohka nor his com¬ 
panion ever returned. 

As soon as spring had opened up, they 
started for the road through the famous 
Cumberland Gap. At Norfolk, Virginia, 
they took passage on a vessel for New York. 
On this trip Tanuhoga and Ganadoga ad¬ 
mired much the skill of the white sailors in 
managing a big white man’s boat. 

The two Indians, who had previously en¬ 
joyed many a good laugh at the expense of 
their white friends, did not make the impres¬ 
sion of being brave Indians on this trip. 

Both of them were very seasick much of 
the time. Tanuhoga had never heard of 
seasickness, and when he took sick quite sud¬ 
denly after a hearty meal, he became much 
frightened. He was firmly convinced that 
somebody had poisoned his food and that he 
was going to die. He even began to sing his 
death song to the uproarious amusement of 
the white sailors, but he soon grew too sick 
to sing. 

Not until Jonas and Nathan also became 


304 THE IKOQUOIS SCOUT 

seasick and made light of the trouble was 
Tanuhoga convinced that he had not been 
poisoned. 

A fair wind brought the vessel to the 
Jersey coast. From their landing place they 
travelled by land to the American outposts 
on the Hudson, where they took passage on 
a northbound sloop, and on the fifteenth of 
April, 1783, they landed in Newburgh Bay 
and half an hour later they dropped their 
packs on the steps of the Stillwell home. 

One of the letters sent from Kentucky had 
reached the anxious parents early in Janu¬ 
ary, and every day since the first of the 
month, the aged parents had been looking 
for the arrival of their sons. 

The feast, which Mother Stillwell made 
for her sons and their two Iroquois friends, 
far surpassed any feast to which Ganadoga 
and Tanuhoga had ever been invited 
amongst the Mohawks and Oneidas. 

A few days later some big news spread 
through the old town. It was spread on 
small cheaply printed hand-bills, but the mes¬ 
sage they carried is living to this day and all 
good Americans hope and pray that it will 


THE LAST ORDER 305 

live forever. The little hand-bills carried a 
copy of George Washington’s last military 
order, issued from his headquarters, which 
were now at Newburgh. 

“ Headquarters, April 18, 1783. 

“ The Commander-in-Chief orders the 
cessation of hostilities between the United 
States of America and the King of Great 
Britain to be publicly proclaimed to-morrow 
at twelve at the New Building: and that the 
proclamation, which will be communicated 
herewith, be read to-morrow morning at the 
head of every regiment and the corps of the 
army; after which, the Chaplains, with the 
several brigades, will render thanks to Al¬ 
mighty God for all His mercies, particularly 
for His overruling the wrath of man to His 
own glory, and causing the rage of war to 
cease among the nations. 

4 4 On such a happy day which is the har¬ 
binger of peace, a day which completes the 
eighth year of the war, it would be ingrati¬ 
tude not to rejoice, it would be insensibility 
not to participate, in the general felicity. 

44 Happy, thrice happy, shall they be 
pronounced hereafter, who have contributed 
anything, who have performed the meanest 
office in erecting this stupendous fabric of 
freedom and empire on the broad basis of in¬ 
dependency, who have assisted in protecting 


306 THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 

the rights of human nature, and establishing 
an asylum for the poor and oppressed of all 
nations and religions.” 

The war was really over. America was 
one of the nations of the world, and the sun 
of peace was once more shining upon the 
American continent after eight long weary 
years of a bitter, ruinous war. 

Henceforth George Washington was to 
live forever in the hearts of men as the fa¬ 
ther of a great free nation, the happiest and 
most blessed on earth. 

Washington was a great general, although 
he never won a great battle. But he never 
gave up and never flinched, and he carried 
on till his great work was done. No other 
general ever fought a great war against so 
many obstacles, against such great odds, and 
under so many discouragements. 

He was the only man in America who 
could have won the war, and he won through 
the greatness and the pure unselfishness of 
his character. He cherished no personal am¬ 
bition like other great generals of history: 
Hannibal, Alexander, Csesar, and Na¬ 
poleon. 


THE LAST ORDER 


307 


In the great drama of human history he 
has only one peer in character and pure pa¬ 
triotism: Abraham Lincoln. 

Ganadoga and Tanuhoga remained with 
their white friends till they grew homesick 
for their own people. 

Ganadoga’s gloomy forebodings as to the 
future of his own people, it must be told, 
proved true. 

The Great Council of the Iroquois never 
met again and never can meet again in the 
future. 

The British ministry shamefully aban¬ 
doned their faithful Indian allies. In the 
peace treaty with the young republic, the 
Indian allies of the English were not even 
mentioned. If it had not been for the per¬ 
sonal intercession of Washington, the State 
of New York would probably have con¬ 
fiscated all Indian lands within its bound¬ 
aries. 

But the Iroquois bravely adapted them¬ 
selves to the inevitable. They are travelling 
the white man’s road. 

Some of them are living on reservations 
in New York. Joseph Brant and some of 


308 


THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 


his followers were, after much delay, given 
a home by the British on Grand River in 
Canada. The Oneidas are living far from 
their ancient home, on Green Bay in the 
State of Wisconsin. 

Jonas, Jim, and Nathan never forgot 
their Iroquois friends. Ganadoga and 
Tanuhoga paid annual visits to their friends 
at Newburgh, and they never went away 
without presents for Oyaseh and Ganowah 
who had been good mothers to the white boys 
in their days of danger and captivity. 


THE END 


ON THE TRAIL OF THE SIOUX 

The Adventures of Two Boy Scouts on 
the Minnesota Frontier 

By D. LANGE 

Illustrated i2mo Cloth Price, Net, $1.50 

""THIS story was written by a prominent 
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fiction. It is well written and in good taster and 
it can be commended to all bo;- reader s and to maor 
Of their elders.”— Hartford Times. 

THE SILVER ISLAND OF 
THE CHIPPEWA 



By D. LANGE 

Illustrated i2mo Cloth Price, Net, $1.50 


H ERE is a boys’ book that tells of the famous 
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ivailaDle.” — Philadelphia Inquirer. 



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LOST IN THE EUR COUNTRY 

By D. LANGE 

Illustrated l2mo Cloth $1.50 net 

R. LANGE is the superintendent of 
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“ It is a thrilling story of Indian life. The 
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with admirable simplicity and directness.”— Ex~ 
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IN THE GREAT WILD NORTH 

By D. LANGE 

Illustrated by W. L. Howes i2mo Cloth 
Price, $1.50 net 

T HE story opens at a Hudson Bay trading 
post, where the father of a sturdy 
Scotch lad, Steve McLean, is in charge. 

Wishing a home of their own, Steve and 
his father, with a faithful Indian as guide, 
make a five-hundred-mile canoe trip to Red 
River, and join in one of great historic 
buffalo hunts, after which they make a thrill¬ 
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Then comes a most adventurous trip down 
the Arkansas River to the Mississippi and 
thence to St. Louis, where the story closes 
happily. It givet a stirring, accurate and 
fascinating account of pioneer life as the 
hardy men and boys of earlier days knew it. 

“ Mr. Lange’s volume gives a faithful account of early pioneer days and 
hardships, introducing much valuable knowledge of Indian craft and wild life.” 
— Philadelphia Public Ledger. 

... . . .1 ■■»»■■■■ -■ . ■ W ■ I I 1 ———————M —1 

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